Leave Her to Heaven: Technicolor, Histrioics, and Outmoded ideals

 

 

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945)

Directed by John M. Stahl

20^th Century Fox, 110 minutes, pre-ratings system

★★

 

 

Leave Her to Heaven is sometimes dubbed the first “film noir” movie made in color. That is, of course, an oxymoron, made evident from its use of Technicolor, which remains the most vivid and crisp film stock in cinematic history. (Nothing used by today’s CGI whiz kids deserves to be mentioned in the same breath!) Leave Her to Heaven was Fox’s top-grossing movie of the entire 1940s and, though she was an also-ran, it garnered actress Gene Tierney’s only Oscar nomination.

 

First, a few words on Tierney. Beyond her first name­–she was named for her father’s brother who died young–there is nothing remotely sexually ambiguous about the glamorous, sultry, and striking Tierney. Today, though, only hardcore film fans recall her. If we cast pre-World War II actresses into the Big Dipper, the “bright” stars would bear names such Bacall, Bergman, Garland, Kelly, and Hepburn; Tierney would be at the duller end of the star spectrum hovering near Alcor. Such is the cruelty of popular culture fame.

 

There is also the issue that some things don’t age well and Leave Her to Heaven is one of them. Brush up on Freud and Greek mythology or you’ll wonder what the fuss was about in 1945. Tierney is Boston socialite Ellen Berent who, on the train to a New Mexico vacation “ranch”–and its posh digs deserve the quotation marks–encounters novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) on a train. He is taken by her beauty and unconventional spunk, but doesn’t expect to see her again. But, of course, he ends up at the same dude ranch. Small problem: She is engaged to marry soon-to-be district attorney Russell Quinton (Vincent Price). This is overcome when Ellen decides Richard is more fun–and he is–than the ambitious and sullen Russell. The two marry after a whirlwind courtship whose only note of discord is that Ellen is fixated on her late father and maybe a tad jealous of her cousin/adopted sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain).

 

This is overcome when they move to Warm Springs, Georgia, to be near Richard’s beloved brother Danny (Daryl Hickman, brother of Dwayne, who was TV’s Dobie Gillis), who was felled by polio and is rehabbing. Outwardly, Ellen is affectionate to Danny, thus Richard dismisses a warning from Ellen’s mother that she has a problem in that she “loves too much.” After all, who could object to that? Call it the film’s Chekov’s gun.

 

This psychosis–as it was considered in prevailing Freudian psychology of the day–becomes acute when Danny is released from rehab and the three of them move into Richard’s “cabin” on a remote lake in Maine, where caretaker Leick (Chill Wills) presides with assumed paternal charm. (It’s no more a “cabin” than the New Mexico location is anyone’s idea of a working “ranch.”) Ellen yearns for a universe of two, not four, and certainly not the six to which it swells when her mother and Ruth come to visit. Several “accidents” occur, before the overwrought Ellen is driven to dispatch herself, but not without first framing Ruth for her “murder.”

 

By today’s standards, the acting is histrionic and numerous things transpire that fall into the category we could label: “That Wouldn’t Happen.” The court scene is especially non-credible. Can you imagine a trial whose prosecutor was none other than Ellen’s cast-off fiancé? Or that he’d be allowed to lead and browbeat witnesses without a peep from the defense attorney? The film’s resolution also seems as abrupt as Ellen and Richard’s leap from sparring to marriage.

 

In retrospect, the gorgeous Technicolor tones are the most memorable thing about the movie. The title comes from Hamlet, though you might come to doubt that heaven is Ellen’s final stop. If you give it a whirl, know that there are oblique nods to Greek figures such as Hippolyta, Medea, and the Sirens. Know also that the Electra complex was much en vogue in the 1940s, and that Chill Wills–who now seems like a character from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood–was once a respected comic actor and sometime country music performer from back when that genre was supposed to be goofy. Or, you might want to wait from my review of Laura, which was perhaps Tierney’s best screen performance.

 

Rob Weir