Leave Her to Heaven
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Leave Her to Heaven is a 1945 American psychological thriller film noir directed by John M. Stahl and starring Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, and Vincent Price. It follows a socialite who marries a prominent novelist, which spurs a violent, obsessive, and dangerous jealousy in her. It is based on the 1944 novel of same name by Ben Ames Williams, adapted by screenwriter Jo Swerling.
Shot in Technicolor, filming took place in several locations in California, as well as Arizona and New Mexico in the summer of 1945. Leave Her to Heaven was released in the United States theatrically on December 20, 1945. The film was a box-office hit, grossing over $8 million, and was Twentieth Century-Fox's highest-grossing film of the entire decade.
In the decades following its release, Leave Her to Heaven garnered a cult following and has been the subject of film criticism for its unique blurring of genres, featuring elements of film noir, psychological thrillers, and melodramas. It has also been noted for its numerous visual and narrative references to figures in Greek mythology. The film's title is drawn from William Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which the Ghost urges Hamlet not to seek vengeance against Queen Gertrude, but rather to "leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her."
In 2018, the film was selected for the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
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Plot
While traveling by train in New Mexico, novelist Richard Harland meets Ellen Berent, a beautiful socialite from Boston. Ellen is particularly drawn to Richard, as he reminds her of her deceased father, to whom she had an obsessive attachment. Ellen is visiting New Mexico to spread her father's ashes, accompanied by her aloof mother and her cousin Ruth, who was adopted by Mrs. Berent (Richard is surprised when Ruth tells him this, and wonders why she did not say "Mr. and Mrs. Berent" adopted her).
Richard and Ellen discover they are vacationing at the same luxurious desert resort, and begin a whirlwind romance. Richard is fascinated by Ellen's exotic beauty and intense personality. The couple's affair is interrupted when Ellen's fiancé, attorney Russell Quinton, from whom she is separated, arrives at the resort unexpectedly. Ellen announces at that time that she and Richard are to be married, to Richard's surprise.
Ellen and Richard marry in Warm Springs, Georgia before staying at Richard's lodge on a lake in northern Maine. Their domestic life is copacetic at first, but it becomes gradually apparent that Ellen is pathologically jealous of anyone and anything Richard cares about, including his family and career. During an unexpected visit from Ellen's family, her mother attempts to warn Richard that Ellen is prone to obsessiveness and a compulsion to "love too much". Ellen's resentment only grows when Richard's beloved teenage brother, Danny, crippled by the effects of polio, comes to live with them. One afternoon, Ellen follows Danny on the lake in a rowboat as he attempts to swim from one end to the other. Ellen knowingly encourages him to press on, even as he begins to struggle to stay afloat. She watches from the boat as Danny sinks below the surface and drowns.
Danny's death is presumed an accident, and Ellen feigns sympathy. After settling at their home in Bar Harbor, Richard is despondent. At Ruth's suggestion, Ellen becomes pregnant in an attempt to please Richard, but later confesses to Ruth that she does not want the child, likening it to a "little beast". One afternoon, Ellen throws herself down a staircase to induce a miscarriage. She succeeds in terminating the pregnancy, and after recovering in the hospital, accuses Ruth of being in love with Richard, citing a dedication in his new novel that possibly alludes to her. Ruth rebukes Ellen by accusing her of causing the misery that has befallen the family. Richard overhears the argument, and begins to suspect Ellen is responsible for the deaths of Danny and of their unborn child.
Richard confronts Ellen about Danny, and she remorselessly admits to having let him drown, and cruelly tells Richard she would do it again if given the chance. Following the confession, Richard leaves Ellen, but does not pursue criminal action as he does not believe there is sufficient evidence. After Richard departs, Ellen sends a letter to Russell—now the county district attorney—in which she accuses Ruth of plotting to murder her. While on a picnic with Ruth and her mother several days later, and unbeknownst to them, Ellen deliberately ingests sugar laced with arsenic. The poison causes Ellen to go into multiple organ failure over several days, and doctors are unable to save her. When Richard visits Ellen on her deathbed, she requests in his confidence that she be cremated, and that he scatter her ashes where she spread her father's in New Mexico, to which he agrees.
After Ellen dies, Ruth has her remains cremated at Richard's instruction. She is subsequently charged with Ellen's murder, prosecuted by Russell. During the trial, Russell proposes that Ruth plotted to kill Ellen so she and Richard could be together, and frames Ruth's cremation of Ellen as a calculated decision to prevent an autopsy. A recalcitrant Richard testifies regarding Ellen's psychopathic jealousy, insisting that she made her own suicide appear as a murder to punish him and Ruth. Ruth is ultimately acquitted, but Richard is sentenced to two years imprisonment as an accessory in Danny's death, as he withheld his knowledge of Ellen's actions. After completing his sentence, Richard returns to his lodge, where he is welcomed lovingly by Ruth.
Cast
- Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent Harland
- Cornel Wilde as Richard Harland
- Jeanne Crain as Ruth Berent
- Vincent Price as Russell Quinton
- Mary Philips as Mrs. Berent
- Ray Collins as Glen Robie
- Gene Lockhart as Dr. Saunders
- Reed Hadley as Dr. Mason
- Darryl Hickman as Danny Harland
- Chill Wills as Leick Thome
- Olive Blakeney as Mrs. Louise Robie (uncredited)
- Jim Farley as Train Conductor (uncredited)
- Grant Mitchell as Carlson (uncredited)
- Earl Schenck as Norton (uncredited)
Analysis
Mythical allusions
The film features a number of allusions to classical Greek mythology, largely the protagonist, Ellen Berent's exhibition of an Electra complex, displaying an obsession over her deceased father. The sequence in which Ellen is shown carrying her father's ashes in an urn, held at her waist while she rides on a horse, is a visual reference to the Greek goddess Hippolyta and the magical girdle bestowed upon her by her father Ares, the god of war.
Scholar S. T. Joshi likens the character of Ellen to a Siren, a mythical water creature who lured sailors to their deaths.Template:Sfn This allusion is supported by film noir scholar Imogen Sara Smith, who notes in her book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City (2014), that Ellen is frequently associated with water and shown swimming, "like a mermaid, cold-blooded and alien, preying on a hapless human male."Template:Sfn
Narratively, Ellen's carrying out of the murders of both her husband's younger brother and her own unborn child alludes to Medea, an intelligent and cunning figure in Greek mythology who, by some mythological accounts, willfully murders her children.
Genre and the femme fatale
Leave Her to Heaven is often described as the first film noir to be shot in color, although film scholars and critics have characterized the film as a thriller, a melodrama (Walker), a psychological melodrama (Turim), a women's film (Morris), or a romantic drama (Bourget). Scholar Emanuel Levy notes that the film embodies both "conventions of the noir and psychological melodrama," blurring the distinction and resulting in a unique, one-of-a-kind work.
Joshi identifies Ellen Berent as one of the prime examples of the femme fatale in film history.Template:Sfn Film and feminist theorist and writer Mary Ann Doane notes that Ellen's "excessive desire" for Richard is signaled by her "intense and sustained stare" at him in the beginning of the film.Template:Sfn Over the course of the film, Ellen reveals her possessiveness in increasingly violent and destructive ways, rendering her, in Doane's words, "the epitome of evil."Template:Sfn Smith notes that Ellen is an atypical example of the femme fatale as, unlike with many of her contemporaries, her impulses to kill and wreak destruction are driven purely by a pathological yearning for love, whereas the prototypical femme fatale is often motivated by financial or other social reasons. Critics who argue that the film is not a film noir note that Ellen does not seduce Richard into acting against his interests or breaking the law (in short, that she is not a femme fatale) (Walker).
