“Leave Her To Heaven” won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Color), and was nominated for Best Actress (Gene Tierney), Best Sound Recording, and Best Art Direction/Interior Decoration.

"There's nothing the matter with Ellen. She just loves too much."

Made the year after "Laura," Gene Tierney's star quality was given the Technicolor treatment in this cold-hearted story of a spoiled princess who never learned the meaning of the word "no." Unlike the openly evil Rhoda in the classic 1956 rotten child chiller "The Bad Seed," the more adult character of Ellen runs on pure instinct; murder and infanticide are merely desperate attempts to preserve the purity of her love, while Rhoda gleefully thrives on tormenting an exceptionally daft adult population.

As Richard Schickel points out in his adequate commentary, "Leave Her To Heaven" was based on a best-selling novel by then popular author Ben Ames Williams, and is still a hugely entertaining slab of juicy melodrama. Gene Tierney plays Ellen as a haunted, flawed woman who finds her ideal father figure in popular novelist (Cornel Wilde), and the film adaptation regularly exploits the jealousies residing beneath already wounded characters. Physical, emotional and psychological conflicts play off each other, and the cold battles are superbly contrasted by the film's rich and extraordinary look.

The colours of "Leave Her To Heaven" are Technicolor Extreme; much in the way producer/ego maniac David O. Selznick guided the blazing look of "Duel in the Sun" to enhance that film's pair of jealous and vindictive lovers, Stahl's approach for his less demonstrative equivalents combines perfectly arranged colours for the clothes, interior sets, and stunning desert and lake locations. The warm colours of Leon Shamroy's cinematography contrast against the numbness of Ellen's misshapen family, while Stahl's only real foray into more operatic cinema is Ellen's famous ash scattering in the mountains; it's a short scene, but magnificently energized by Alfred Newman's brooding score (available on CD), and flashes of Freudian nonsense.

Fox' transfer is very attractive, and the sharpness frequently reveals some interesting details lost in those old 16mm TV prints; the clarity captures a series of eddying lens flares during the film's courtroom sequence; and a restoration comparison follows some new darkening that smoothens some serious continuity errors between a series of day-for-night shots.

The commentary track balances straightforward thoughts from Schickel - who often repeats himself - and actor Darryl Hickman. The latter's views on being a child actor during the Forties are the most intriguing, alongside recollections of working with his cast, director Stahl, and cinematographer Shamroy. As a whole, the track would have been better served by some judicious editing, but it's still a decent effort, and a light chronicle of a classic Technicolor noire film when practically all of the original participants have long passed away.

© 2005 Mark R. Hasan