Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

'I'll never let you go. Never, never, never...'

‘Gene Tierney’s Ellen: an angel face with the darkest of hearts…’

I came late to Leave Her to Heaven (1945), discovering the film last year via Martin Scorsese’s A Personal Journey through American Movies (1995)- a fascinating documentary available to watch on the BFI player plug-in via Amazon Prime. Based on Ben Ames Williams’ best seller of 1944, director John M. Stahl shot Leave Her to Heaven on saturated three-strip technicolor (covering the entire colour spectrum)- described by Scorsese as a “fascinating hybrid, a film noir in colour.” At that time, colour was rarely used for contemporary drama, then more associated with musicals and period pieces. The title comes from Hamlet:

Leave her to heaven 
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, 
To prick and sting her.

The Ghost tells Hamlet to leave Gertrude (his mother) out of revenge and not to seek retribution on her. Rather, he should leave her to the torment of her conscience and leaving heaven and God to judge her fate.

‘A fascinating hybrid, a film noir in colour…’

Gene Tierney stars as Ellen Berent, a glossy Society vamp from Boston- ‘an angel face with the darkest of hearts’, an ‘erotically possessive woman destroying anybody who comes between her and husband, even the unwanted child she’s carrying.’ Gene’s a stunner- not just ‘pretty’ or ‘easy on the eye’ (these days, pretty girls are two a penny, are they not?)- but drop-dead, ravishingly gorgeous, along the lines of a Hedy Lamarr or a Vivien Leigh. Anyway, Gene then meets a writer (Richard Harland, played by Cornel Wilde) on the New Mexico Express- who happens to bear an uncanny, if disturbing, resemblance to her ‘Daddy’, deceased.

‘Patricia Highsmith territory- genuinely disturbing, even haunting…’

Oh, it’s psychological, twisted stuff- especially the fabulous, unsettling sequence on the lake, with the varnished white rowing boat, dark sunglasses and Richard’s crippled younger brother, polio victim Danny (Darryl Hickman)- we’re in Patricia Highsmith territory. It’s dark and genuinely disturbing, even haunting- and beautifully composed. As if you can feel the cold, still waters of the lake. There’s a sense of place.