“A FEMME FATALE IN TECHNICOLOR”

By Raymond Benson

John M. Stahl’s celebrated melodrama from 1945, Leave Her to Heaven, is often cited as a film noir. I argue—vehemently—that it is not. It is a melodrama with elements of a crime in the plot, but it does not contain any of the signature traits of true film noir other than the presence of a femme fatale (and a glorious one at that, in the form of Ellen Berendt, played by the luminous and Oscar-nominated Gene Tierney).

Film noir is exclusively black and white by definition. Leave Her to Heaven is filmed in gorgeous Technicolor. Film noir must contain a crime, which Heaven does, but it is not the essential plot device. The protagonist of Heaven—writer Richard Harland (played by Cornel Wilde)—is not a cynical, hard-boiled character, which is a fundamental ingredient of film noir. In this case he is a victim of a mentally ill woman who is so possessive of him that she destroys everything around him, including her own sister, Ruth (adopted into her family, played by Jeanne Crain). There are no bizarre plot twists of the type usually seen in film noir; no dialogue filled with innuendo; no scenes in shabby bars, motels, or streets; no night scenes; no corrupt law or authority figures (unless Vincent Price’s D.A. counts for being overly jealous of Harland); no camerawork evoking the style of German Expressionism; no thematic emphasis on fate or destiny; no flashbacks or voice-over narration; and, most tellingly, it has a happy ending. (All of the above examples are common attributes of pure film noir.)

No, the most film noir element that Leave Her to Heaven has going for it is the femme fatale character… and she is also perfectly at home in the old-fashioned domestic melodrama, which is what this motion picture certainly is. Granted, she is a bit more twisted than most antagonists in “women’s pictures,” in which director Stahl specialized during the 1930s. That said, as a melodrama, Heaven is quite good. The acclaim it receives for the color photography is well deserved (it won the Oscar for Color Cinematography).

The story in a nutshell—Richard meets Ellen on a train on the way to visit friends in New Mexico. Ellen is engaged to someone else, but within a few days, she breaks off the engagement and talks Richard into marrying her. She then proceeds to dominate Richard’s life, even pushing out his beloved disabled younger brother (which will lead to the tragic, evil, most famous sequence in the picture), and her own family. The term “mental illness” was probably not used much in 1945, but Heaven is a masterful depiction of a woman with that affliction. This is what the movie is about—not the crime that takes place in the story.

It's all very engaging, although the courtroom scene toward the end has flaws of believability. Price’s D.A. character constantly badgers witnesses without a single objection from the opposing lawyer (played by Ray Collins), and the charges against the accused—and subsequent prison sentence for a different person—are so far off base from true legal standing that it’s laughable. (I also find Alfred Newman’s score to be a bit overbearing.)

Still—Leave Her to Heaven is good throwback viewing to the 1940s… and, wow, that Technicolor is something to behold on Criterion’s superb Blu-ray disk! It’s a new 2K digital restoration by Twentieth Century Fox, the Academy Film Archive, and The Film Foundation, and it contains an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

The only supplement is a thorough, informative interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith. The booklet contains a wonderful essay by crime novelist Megan Abbott.

Criterion’s Leave Her to Heaven package is certainly worth an upgrade if you already own the previously issued DVD.

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