Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor 110m
Director: John M. Stahl
Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price
Synopsis:
A writer falls foul of a beautiful heiress with an erotic fixation on her dead father, whom he resembles.
Review:
Delirious melodrama with lurid colour and a superheated Alfred Newman score. The costumes and settings are meticulously prepared and good as new in a handsome Fox production, but the acting is merely adequate in the face of a merely functional script. Still, the beastliness of our glorious madwoman affords plenty of entertainment value, as does Price's star turn as the D.A. in a travesty of a court scene at the end: not only is a man once jilted by the deceased allowed to prosecute her alleged killers, but the supposed defending counsel does not speak a single word of objection to his badgering tirade of questions! One of a number of films in the latter half of the forties (Forever Amber, Mildred Pierce, and their British Gainsborough equivalents) that appealed directly to a newly autonomous female audience. Note: the heroine complains of the walls' being like paper at the log cabin they share with his younger brother and friend, and in another scene she lies on top of the supine Wilde's bed in close-up. When she rises and we pull back to medium shot, she has visibly been under the covers - both details quite risqué for the time. On the other hand, she only has to think about the possibility of having a child, and she falls pregnant immediately!
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor 110m
Director: John M. Stahl
Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price
Synopsis:
A writer falls foul of a beautiful heiress with an erotic fixation on her dead father, whom he resembles.
Review:
Delirious melodrama with lurid colour and a superheated Alfred Newman score. The costumes and settings are meticulously prepared and good as new in a handsome Fox production, but the acting is merely adequate in the face of a merely functional script. Still, the beastliness of our glorious madwoman affords plenty of entertainment value, as does Price's star turn as the D.A. in a travesty of a court scene at the end: not only is a man once jilted by the deceased allowed to prosecute her alleged killers, but the supposed defending counsel does not speak a single word of objection to his badgering tirade of questions! One of a number of films in the latter half of the forties (Forever Amber, Mildred Pierce, and their British Gainsborough equivalents) that appealed directly to a newly autonomous female audience. Note: the heroine complains of the walls' being like paper at the log cabin they share with his younger brother and friend, and in another scene she lies on top of the supine Wilde's bed in close-up. When she rises and we pull back to medium shot, she has visibly been under the covers - both details quite risqué for the time. On the other hand, she only has to think about the possibility of having a child, and she falls pregnant immediately!
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor 110m
Director: John M. Stahl
Cast: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price
Synopsis:
A writer falls foul of a beautiful heiress with an erotic fixation on her dead father, whom he resembles.
Review:
Delirious melodrama with lurid colour and a superheated Alfred Newman score. The costumes and settings are meticulously prepared and good as new in a handsome Fox production, but the acting is merely adequate in the face of a merely functional script. Still, the beastliness of our glorious madwoman affords plenty of entertainment value, as does Price's star turn as the D.A. in a travesty of a court scene at the end: not only is a man once jilted by the deceased allowed to prosecute her alleged killers, but the supposed defending counsel does not speak a single word of objection to his badgering tirade of questions! One of a number of films in the latter half of the forties (Forever Amber, Mildred Pierce, and their British Gainsborough equivalents) that appealed directly to a newly autonomous female audience. Note: the heroine complains of the walls' being like paper at the log cabin they share with his younger brother and friend, and in another scene she lies on top of the supine Wilde's bed in close-up. When she rises and we pull back to medium shot, she has visibly been under the covers - both details quite risqué for the time. On the other hand, she only has to think about the possibility of having a child, and she falls pregnant immediately!