Review of Leave Her to Heaven (1945) by Cindy I — 24 Aug 2010

You think you have a spiteful girlfriend? No you don't. Let Gene Tierney show you how it's done. She beautifully WICKEDLY plays a woman in love with Cornel Wilde and goes to greater and greater lengths to keep him all the herself. And when she thinks she's about to lose him? She goes even farther. Nope, even farther than that.

The rest of the actors -- Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Dwayne Hickman and Vincent Price -- are fine in this film, but it is Tierney who makes it. Several times in the film she goes into this creepy blank-eyed stare that completely weirded me out.

There are a couple of things about the film I wasn't fond of -- the flashback narration I felt didn't work as well as if the film had been told straight, and I didn't like the closing frames. But the film is well-worth watching, if only for Gene Tierney's performance.