Special Exhibit: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN

 

Year: 1945

Duration: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime.

Gene Tierney happens to star in two of my favorite noir thrillers of all time. One, of course, is her haunting portrayal of the titular murdered woman in Laura, who manages to seduce a hardened detective with just a picture of herself. One year latter she would go to play the other side of an obsessive relationship in the unforgettable Leave Her to Heaven.

This film became a big box office winner, even turning into the highest grossing entry of its studio, 20th Century Fox for a whole decade, and it sets itself apart from most noir classics by rejecting the usual contrasted black and white, instead employing a lavish Technicolor photography that turns it into one of the most beautiful looking-entries of the genre.

Cornel Wilde plays the protagonist, Richard, a writer who meets Tierney's femme fatale, Ellen, during a train trip and becomes instantly smitten. What could have been a brief flirting has a chance to expand when it turns out that they're both staying at the same resort in New Mexico.

Ellen isn't there alone. She's with her mother and cousin turned adopted sister, Ruth (an adorable Jeanne Crain). More importantly, she's taking with her the ashes of her father, with whom she was obsessively close. And it turns out that Richard reminds her of her dear dead dad.

Richard is surprised but smug about being at the center of this woman's affections, especially when it seems like she will chose her over her fiancé (a lawyer played by Vincent Price). But he is far from the only threat to their romance: even from the start, we can feel there's something dangerous about the obsessive and self-centered Ellen.

Remember, back when noir films where made, the notion of it as a separate genre still hadn't been established, and thus they were considered simply as melodramas, and this movie embraces that side more than most, to fun yet thrilling effect.

I can't explain the true nature of the film that starts in the second act, when the couple moves to an idyllic lake house (the sets on this picture really stand out!), but you'll surely have deduced it by then. When the tense centerpiece of the movie, which involves a small boat, takes place, you can be sure things are only getting started. Even after the source of conflict is apparently neutralized, the woes are far from over for our hero and heroine. SPOILER:

Said actual heroine, of course, being Ruth and not Ellen.

Truly a classic for the ages, Leave Her To Heaven has all the glamour of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the narrative trappings of a more modern thriller.