Despite some fervent proselytizing from no less than Martin Scorsese, 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven still lacks the cult following the film so richly deserves. Impossible to describe without using the word lurid, Leave Her to Heaven features more perverse activity than any number of more celebrated cult faves—including Nicholas Ray’s infamous Joan Crawford western Johnny Guitar. But now audiences have another chance to discover its particular pleasures at Film Forum through March 12.To watch Leave Her to Heaven, even today, is to be left astounded that such a subversive movie could have been made in the ‘40s. Gene Tierney may be better known as the girl in the portrait in Laura, but she was never as good before or after as she is here, playing the insanely (literally) jealous Ellen, a woman so possessive that her love for her father derails her parents’ marriage, and she coolly watches her young brother-in-law drown rather than share her new husband with him any more.
That scene has been widely acclaimed, with Tierney sitting absolutely still in a boat, eyes hidden behind a glamorous pair of sunglasses, watching as Danny (until recently paralyzed from the waist down) sinks again and again into the water.
But the whole film is filled with similar jaw-dropping scenes, like Ellen scattering her father’s ashes on horseback (most of them spraying across her breasts in the breeze), or the feverish way she talks about her new husband’s resemblance to her father or the interview between Ellen and Danny’s doctor, in which she begs him to say that Danny isn’t well enough to leave the sanitarium to live with her. “But after all,” she all but yells, exasperated that she’s being thwarted, “he’s a cripple!”
In fact, the only time the film lags is when Tierney isn’t on-screen. Cornel Wilde stumbles through the film as Ellen's husband exhibiting only three expressions (one of which is blank), but Tierney makes the film what it is. Her particular feline beauty, all crimson lips, slanted eyes and slight overbite, are a perfect match for the eye-searing Technicolor and the thudding, evocative score by Alfred Newman, both which would have left a less physically distinctive actress in the dust. If you’ve ever conflated the Golden Age of Hollywood with cookie cutter movies, treat yourself to Leave Her to Heaven. I promise you’ll never be the same again.
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox
