Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

“The American family melodrama at its most neurotic…John Stahl’s 1945 film is so lurid that it seems to exist on another plane of reality: it may be absurd, and even risible, but its single-minded concentration has its own kind of fascination and power. The great cinematographer Leon Shamroy shot it, and the artificial brightness of the 40s color adds yet another level of abstraction—the actors seem enameled against the backgrounds.” — Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

SYNOPSIS

Fox hit the jackpot when John M. Stahl, cinematographer Leon Shamroy, and screenwriter Jo Swerling adapted Ben Ames Williams’ bestselling novel into what became the studio’s highest-grossing film of the 1940s. Sometimes described as a Technicolor noir, Stahl’s adaptation follows novelist Richard Harland and his seemingly devoted wife Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney), whose all-consuming love gradually curdles into something far more possessive and destructive. French critic Jacques Lourcelles astutely observed that the film “carries the viewer from a flamboyant melodrama into the most poisonous of films noir,” as Stahl steadily equates middle-class aspiration with a form of madness. Bathed in Leon Shamroy’s breathtaking Technicolor photography, Leave Her to Heaven heightens its sordid proceedings into a delirious spectacle of romantic obsession, jealousy, and slow-burning poison. Nominated for Best Actress as the Oscars, Tierney delivers the signature performance of her career as Ellen, one of the most unforgettable figures in all of Classical Hollywood cinema.

Leave Her To Heaven screens as part of our limited series, “In Glorious Technicolor.”