Leave Her to Heaven

Leave Her to Heaven
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John M. Stahl
Produced by	William A. Bacher
Screenplay by	Jo Swerling
Story by	Ben Ames Williams
Starring	Gene Tierney Cornel Wilde Jeanne Crain Vincent Price
Music by	Alfred Newman
Cinematography	Leon Shamroy
Editing by	James B. Clark
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Release date(s)	December 19, 1945 (1945-12-19) (United States)
Running time	110 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American 20th Century Fox Technicolor film noir motion picture starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, with Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, and Chill Wills. The story revolves around a femme fatale who entraps a husband and commits several crimes motivated by her insane jealousy.

The story was adapted for the screen by Jo Swerling, having been based on the best selling novel of the same name authored by Ben Ames Williams. The film was directed by John M. Stahl. Tierney received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress in a Leading Role for this film. The film grossed over $5,000,000 and was Fox's highest-grossing picture of the 1940s.

Plot

The film starts by showing us the novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) who has been released and is traveling home after two years in prison. In a flashback (which runs for almost the whole duration of the film) we see how Richard meets beautiful socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) on a train. Ellen falls in love with him, mainly because he so closely resembles her recently deceased father, to whom she was obsessively attached.

Ellen is already engaged to another man (Vincent Price), but she jilts him and rapidly marries Richard, who at first is fascinated not only with Ellen's beauty, but with her exotic and intense manner. It gradually becomes apparent however that Ellen is pathologically jealous towards any other person and any other activity that her husband cares about.

Two tragedies strike Richard: the "accidental" drowning death of his younger disabled brother, whom he dearly loved, and the "accidental" death of Richard's unborn son when Ellen "trips" and falls down a flight of stairs. The husband starts to suspect that his wife is directly responsible for these two deaths. When Ellen confesses to him what she did and why she did it, he leaves her. She then decides to kill herself with poison, making sure that in doing so she frames (for the apparent crime of murder), her adoptive sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain), a sweet and wholesome woman of whom Richard is very fond.

Ellen's ex-fiance is the prosecutor for Ruth's trial. The trial is going very badly for Ruth, who under pressure has admitted that she does in fact love Richard, a fact she had previously kept hidden. Then Richard testifies about Ellen's insane jealousy and her confessions to him. Ruth is acquitted, and Richard is sentenced to 2 years in prison for his part in the two murders (he had become an accessory to the crimes by virtue of withholding knowledge of Ellen's actions).

The flashback ends, and we see Richard being welcomed home with a loving embrace from Ruth.

Cast

• Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent Harland
• Cornel Wilde as Richard Harland
• Jeanne Crain as Ruth Berent
• Vincent Price as Russell Quinton
• Mary Philips as Mrs. Berent
• Ray Collins as Glen Robie
• Gene Lockhart as Dr. Saunders
• Reed Hadley as Dr. Mason
• Darryl Hickman as Danny Harland
• Chill Wills as Leick Thome

Background

The title is a quote from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Act I, Scene V, the Ghost urges Hamlet not to seek vengeance against Queen Gertrude, but rather to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."

Reception

Cornel Wilde and Gene Tierney in a scene from the film

Critical response

The staff at Variety magazine gave the film a positive review, writing, "Sumptuous Technicolor mounting and a highly exploitable story lend considerable importance to Leave Her to Heaven that it might not have had otherwise...Tierney and Wilde use their personalities in interpreting their dramatic assignments. Crain's role of Tierney's foster-sister is more subdued but excellently done. Vincent Price, as the discarded lover, gives a theatrical reading to the courtroom scenes as the district attorney."

More recently, Lou Lumenick, film critic for the New York Post, wrote, "John M. Stahl's masterful Leave Her to Heaven (1945) sounds like a contradiction in terms - a film noir in eye-popping Technicolor, with its most chilling scene taking place not in a dimly lit back alley but on a lake in Maine. But make no mistake - the gorgeous Gene Tierney's homicidally jealous Ellen Berent is the fatalest of femmes in this gorgeously restored classic, beginning a one-week run at Film Forum today." It was cited by acclaimed director Martin Scorsese as one of his favourite films of all time and assessed Gene Tierney as one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era.

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on eighteen reviews.

Academy of Motion Pictures Awards

Wins

• Academy Award: Oscar, Best Cinematography -- Color, Leon Shamroy ; 1946

Nominations

• Best Actress in a Leading Role, Gene Tierney.
• Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color, Lyle R. Wheeler, Maurice Ransford, and Thomas Little.
• Best Sound, Recording, Thomas T. Moulton (20th Century-Fox SSD); 1946.

Adaptation

• Too Good to Be True (1988 television version).

See also

• Mental illness in film

External links

• Leave Her to Heaven at the Internet Movie Database
• Leave Her to Heaven at the TCM Movie Database
• Leave Her to Heaven film trailer at Reelz Channel
• Martin Scorsese discusses Leave Her to Heaven at 45th New York Film Festival