Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

(On TV, September 2020) The first half-hour of Leave Her to Heaven had me very, very confused—it’s a film noir, and yet I was served a Technicolor romantic drama about a man and his possessive new wife. While the images were spectacular (That lodge! Wow, that lodge!) and a foreboding prologue promised much, we were so deep in melodramatic territory that I found my attention slipping—Sure, Gene Tierney is always worth a look (although Jeanne Crain has her beat here), but would the film eventually get any better? And then it does, spectacularly. After a few arguments realistic enough to be uncomfortable, the film cranks it up midway through as a shocking death puts the female lead’s psychological cruelty to the forefront, and then it’s off to races as things get more and more convoluted for our likable protagonist. There are femmes fatales in film noir, and then there’s Gene Tierney’s character here, willing to plot revenge from beyond the grave in an effort to ensure that her husband will remain hers no matter what. By the end of Leave Her to Heaven, the film’s moniker as “the first Technicolor film noir” made complete sense—although I note with some amusement that it does provide a somewhat uplifting ending after so much misery. The blend of genres may be off-putting on a first viewing, but it does make the film stand out, even today, as something refreshingly different. Cornel Wilde is fine in the male lead role and Vincent Price does make a mark in a relatively short turn as a jilted then prosecuting attorney. But the film belongs to Gene Tierney, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. I’ll note that the film fits rather well in the “domestic thriller” subgenre of the era, albeit gender-flipped so that it’s the woman who is the threat rather than the husband. From an inauspicious beginning, Leave Her to Heaven does pack quite a punch in its later half. If you’re bored still after the first few minutes, keep watching—it gets much better.