Review of Leave Her to Heaven (1945) by Doug C — 21 Aug 2010

The title taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Leave her to Heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, to prick and sting her." Gene Tierney in a vividly colored technicolor as a monstrous Fatal Attraction-style femme fatale who kills everyone that she images to be between her and her husband makes this a remarkable early color noir, and the film uses color far better than other early color noirs by using thematic contrasts between the colors and characters rather than simply using black and white cimenmatographic noir techniques with the new color medium.

A mythic element that runs throughout the film is also effective, but the film develops very slowly and the plot is often too gimmicky.The courtroom scenes at the climax of the film are particularly unrealistic, and overall this could have been a far better movie than it is with tighter development and less melodrama.