At the 45th New York Film Festival,Martin Scorsesedeclared that “Gene Tierneyis one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era.“His statement was part of his introductionto a screening of the 1945 filmLeave Her to Heaven, in which Tierney commands top billing. It’s hard to argue with Martin Scorsese, but this is a special case of no lies detected. Tierney portrayed complex women throughout her career butwent against type forLeave Her to Heavento impressive effect. IfLeave Her to Heavenis a film noir mixed with psychological thriller, mixed further with melodrama,then Ellen Berent, its femme fatale, is no overtly sexualized minx tempting the morally gray protagonist to evil. She’s the devil in a carefully constructed human disguise, a simmering pot always on the edge of boiling.
AndLeave Her to Heavenis indeed a noir, despite what first assumptions might think. It commands aCriterion Collection level of respectwithin the film noir canon. It was the highest-grossing film of the 1940s for Twentieth Century Fox. Yet to more casual noir devotees, this majestically sinister character piece feels likean overlooked treasure. Maybe it’sbecause its look doesn’t ring like proper noir.Leave Her to Heavenwasfilmed in full Technicolor gloryrather than the traditional black and white. There’s a distinct lack of expressionistic shadows, low-key chiaroscuro lighting, andgrumpy detectives with as many witty one-linersas bullets.
Therein lies the film’s cleverest chess move:decades beforeneo-noir took the stage,Heavenproves thatfilm noir’s misanthropic core stems from atmosphere, mood, and intent. As a slow-burn thriller, the film seduces the viewer as much as its leading lady does her husband, and in so doing, crafts one of the most chilling femme fatales to ever grace the silver screen. YetEllen’s psychology deconstructs the basic notion of the femme fatale archetype. In her mind, everything she does is in the pursuit of love. And no act is off limits.
Leave Her to Heaven
A writer falls in love with a young socialite and they’re soon married, but her obsessive love for him threatens to be the undoing of them both as well as everyone around them.
‘Leave Her to Heaven’ Begins Like a Seductive Mystery
Leave Her to Heavenbroke the rules before the production shot an inch of film. Based on a novel byBen Ames Williams, 20th Century Fox paid $100,000 to secure film rights from Williams — and the book wasn’t published yet. For the mid-1940s, “an exorbitant price for an unpublished work,” per the Criterion Collection. Likewise, filming anything except “epics and musicals"in Technicolor was unheard of. DirectorJohn M. Stahland cinematographerLeon Shamrovcreated “the first film noir in Technicolor,” and every ounce of it pays off. Instead of dark alleyways, the shadows are shadows cast by tree branches shining into a well-lit room. Sunsets toast the desert panorama landscapes. Colors pop, especially Ellen Brandt’s lipstick, its red evoking the poisoned apple fromSnow White.
Leave Her to Heavenunfolds like a proper mystery. Richard Harlan (Cornel Wilde) has returned to his home after several years in prison. A somber tension shadows his reunion with his friends. Someone mentions an unnamed “she.” Cue a flashback (such a proper noir move!) to years earlier, when Richard meets the luminous Ellen Berent. Richard’s a published author, and Ellen is reading one of his books. The pair’s eyes meet, and a match is struck. Ellen stares at Richard without blinking. Her face is as dangerous as broken stained-glass, her still gaze revealing nothing except a calculating entrancement. Then Ellen apologizes, explaining that Richard bears a “remarkable resemblance” to her recently deceased father.The two fall into an impulsive romance that swiftly leads to marriage. Between their sultry chemistry and stunning scenes in the New Mexico mountains backed by swelling orchestral music, everything indicates there’s nothing more here than anera-appropriate romance.
Except — there’s the matter of Ellen’s singular intensity. The revelation that Richard’s beloved new wife is a manipulative mastermind unfolds as slowly as a good poker game.Her single-minded purpose is to isolate Richard and own him completely. To that end,Tierney initially plays Ellen as calmly as an undisturbed river. She’s outgoing without being aggressive, and enticingly hypnotic without employing open seduction. Any hints of her toxic nature require audience attentiveness: she hunts turkeys; her fixation on her father reads like an Elektra complex. Her cousin Ruth (Jeanne Crain) and her mother (Mary Philips) speak about Ellen with an awkward reservation bordering on contemptuous. If traditional noirs confront the characters' pathologies through cynical monologues about a hopeless world,Heavenreframes Richard and Ellen’s innocent conversations into ominous warnings.
Simultaneously,Tierney makes Ellen too disarming and radiant to doubt her as anything more than a unique woman. The screen adores her. Rather than rely upon a troubled detective or a complicated murder case, this mystery is of the mind and brews tension with the same disciplined sharpness asAlfred Hitchcock’s later work. A bomb is going to explode, but when, and who’s caught in the shrapnel, remains unknown.
Ellen Is Actually a Monster in Disguise
The truth of Ellen’s nature starts leaking through her facade when her fiancé Russell Quinton (a youthfulVincent Price, of all people) confronts Ellen about their broken engagement.Ellen’s possessive proclamation of love for Richard is sinister when her eyes are as empty as a black hole. Despite a significant height difference, Ellen’s the one metaphorically staring down at a defeated Russell like a triumphant, twisted goddess. This is the third time Price and Tierney were paired off romantically in a film, and unlikeLauraandDragonwyck,Tierney’s the fiend destroying her lover piece by piece.
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Richard and his new bride move to a cozy cottagecore house in Maine (abandoning the unspoken rule that noir requires a gloomy urban setting). Everything seems like a beatific honeymoon period, and then it goes to hell in a hand basket when Richard’s younger brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) moves in with the newlyweds. Ellen wants Richard all to herself. She won’t be satisfied by anything less. Ellen’s visceral revulsion at Danny’s intrusion hums like a living thing. When the boy rejects Ellen’s suggestions to move somewhere else,she lets him drown in a lake.
This is the one:the film’s most crucial and singular moment. The bomb explodes, and it’s a shocking scene dripping with moral depravity and noir menace. Once Danny disappears under the water, Ellen slides on her sunglasses and sits immovable, listening to his screams for help without flinching. Now we know the secret Ellen kept concealed. Her mother claims that “she loves too much, she can’t help it,” while still asserting thatEllen’s ardent adoration has destroyed everyone she’s known. Danny’s presence threatens her world enough to commit a senseless murder, but the problems keep compiling: she’s jealous of the time Richard spends writing, jealous of his interactions with Ruth. This isn’t a traditional “crazy” woman, butsomeone so bereft of love that her actions lean sociopathic. None of this negates how she’s a spider who caught her man in her web and wants to consume him alive.
Gene Tierney’s Ellen Is the Definitive Femme Fatale
Film noir is studded withphenomenal femme fatales— takeBarbara Stanwyck’sturn inDouble Indemnity, or Jane Greer inOut of the Past.During this lake scene, they’ve got nothing on Tierney. Ellen’s ferocious cruelty, the gloating satisfaction she derives from it, and her growing desperation to keep her claws in Richard, drag the film into the territory ofgothic horror. And that horror is from a perceived housewife, not some criminal overload. Concealing her infamously emotionless eyes behind black sunglasses is a visual allegory too good to handle. Film noir always centers oncharacters of dubious morality, and dubious morality is the definition of the femme fatale. Those women never become the protagonist’s wife, however.Leave Her to Heavenembraces the femme fatale tropes with chillingly brutal effectivenessin a far more realistic setting. Suitably, Tierney received her only Oscar nomination for her performance (cue Martin Scorsese asserting her underrated status).
Ellen isn’t entirely devoid of sympathy. Her pregnancy makes her feel trapped and weakened, which is a radical expression of how complicated pregnancies can be for some individuals, even if it’s from the mouth of a corrupt woman. Ellen knows she’s losing Richard’s love, but she can’t endure having a child inside her, nor its birth usurping her and Richard’s solitude.The roles of housewife and mother are stifling, and her silent fury leads her to terminate the pregnancy by tossing herself down the house stairs. Changing into a glamorous blue nightdress with heels to match and re-applying her lipstick recalls a warrior preparing for battle. It’s remarkable thatHeavengot this momentpast the Hays Code censors.
‘Leave Her to Heaven’ Changes the Style but Keeps the Substance
Speaking of the Hays Code: an immoral woman must receive punishment. When Ellen confesses her crimes in a failed attempt to make Richard understand her motivations, she poisons herself with arsenic and frames Ruth for her death. Richard isn’t having it; as he tells the courtroom, Ellen “is now reaching from the grave to destroy [Ruth]. Yes, she was that kind of monster.” Unlike some femme fatales who long for redemption, there are no extenuating circumstances to forgive Ellen’s transgressions. Still, there’s a twitch of remaining sympathy for how futile her (vengeful) search for love was.Leave Her to Heavenis one of film noir’s most staggering achievementsbecause it digs past the genre’s stylistic expectations and unearths its core themes only to drop them within a tranquil color palette.Its classically fatalistic mentality stems from our femme fatale’s shameless inhumanityrather than despair over the world at large, which results in a macabre masterpiece as sharply refined as its heroine’s claws.
Leave Her to Heavenis available to stream on the Plex Channel in the U.S.
