Review of Leave Her to Heaven (1945) by David U — 26 May 2006

[font=Tahoma][font=Trebuchet MS][size=2]Ellen Berent is one of film noir's more interesting [i]femme fatales[/i]- so much so, in fact, it feels uneasy to even label her as such, for this a woman driven not by evil, or greed, like so many of the famous female characters of her cinematic era; instead, Ellen is driven to bad deeds, as her mother (Mary Philips) frequently waxes, beccause she "loves too much". As the film opens, we are treated to a brief sequence in the present, where, by a beautifully glassy lake, a lawyer welcomes back an old friend, Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde), who is greeted with murmurs by the other people around, and immediatly sets off over the lake after being told that "she" is waiting for him. The lawyer, lackadaisically talking with a friend, sends us off into flashback, which lasts for almost the entire movie- only returning to the present time at the very end. This flashback format does seem rather pointless, and is so brief you're ultimately shocked to return there at the end, but given that it seemed to be the "in-thing" at the time, it's easy to led it slide.

Like so many of the femme fatales, Ellen is presented to us with an immediate sense of intrigue- as Richard, whom I suppose you should call our hero, despite his almost inherent blandness, ventures into the dining car of the train he is travelling on, he stops a glamourous-looking woman from across the carriage, who, as we soon discover, is coincidentally reading one of his novels. We also discover, of course, that Richard is a guest at Ellen's own Maine country house, which raises immediate questions about just how crafty our Ellen is. But unlike the other femme fatales, Ellen is not a precise and balanced creature- she is rash, emotional and unstable, taking advantage of moments as opposed to planning them. This lack of coolness to Ellen's character makes it easier to care about her, which of course increases the unsettling nature of the things she ultimately does.

[i]Leave Her to Heaven[/i]'s main bargaining tool is it's star Gene Tierney, who is now most famous for her role the previous year in the intoxicating noir [i]Laura[/i]- and, of course, for eventually falling prey to her difficult personal life and succumbing to depression. Tierney's turn as Ellen is not her best work, too often driven by the script into hysterics and almost losing a handle on her character, but when the plot is this absurb, it's main requirement for the character is not acting ability, but beauty, and it cannot be argued that Tierney had that in spades. Leon Shamroy's Oscar-winning photography now looks a little garish and overly bright, but it captures Tierney's rather dangerous looks perfectly, adding much to the idea that this is a woman who is perfectly aware of her appearance but has no handle on her emotions. Despite the fact that Tierney is not always believable, the film loses most of it's lustre once she vanishes from the screen, making the last twenty minutes- despite the presence of the inimitable, but here annoying, Vincent Price- a decided bore. Tierney gives us all the best moments in the film, from her vividly powerful 'scattering' of Ellen's father's ashes to her calculated 'fall' down the stairs while pregnant.

The film's most famous- and rightly so- moment, however, is not just so alarmingly dramatic because of Tierney, though Ellen's rather hollow reactions are a large part of the sequence. In the icy cold sequence where Ellen simply lets Richard's brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) drown as he, still not out of the danger of a broken leg, tries to swim is immensely powerful, and this comes from director John M. Stahl's simple decision- to keep it silent. There are many moments in 'Leave Her to Heaven' where Alfred Newman's pedestrian and melodramatic score blares up unwantedly, making everything seem unfortunately like a soap opera, but here, Stahl keeps it quiet, and the unsettling lack of any noise whatsoever as Stahl keeps the focus on Tierney's unemotional face left me, at least, with a quickly-beating heart as the film faded to black.

Sympathy for all the characters here, undoubtably a present feeling as the film primarily progresses, slowly slips away, though quite clearly for obvious reasons. In the early sequences, Wilde's everyman character has a comfortable sense of confusion about him, sucked into marriage without really seeming to want it when Tierney defies former fiancee Russell Quinton (Price) by suddenly announcing her new engagement. But Wilde's rather one-note characterisation starts to get wearisome, and it's strangely hard to feel much sympathy when Ellen starts removing his loved ones because Wilde finds it so difficult to show his grief. Philips does well in her limited role, though it feels like she's simply filling narrative gaps, while Jeanne Crain, as Ellen's adopted sister Ruth, is only given a scene near the end to declare any kind of feeling, which it's difficult to understand. [i]Leave Her to Heaven[/i] clearly wants us to care for Richard and Ruth, and eventually hate Ellen, but dichotomously the script only gives us privy to Ellen's thoughts and feelings, and even if those are rather cruel and doubting thoughts, it still means the audience has far more interest in Ellen than any other character.

[i]Leave Her to Heaven[/i]'s once beloved production now seems faded and rather tatty, but it becomes almost second-string to the intriguing story of Ellen Berent, who, unlike most other [i]femme fatales[/i], is driven by emotions we can understand, and it is therefore easier to care for her. It's a shame she's surrounded by such bland characters, then, for, with a broadened script and perhaps a better supporting cast, [i]Leave Her to Heaven[/i] could have been a classic. But I guess only Ellen can enter that special hall-of-fame- the rest of the film; well, Heaven can do what it wants with it.[/size][/font].

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