Description
Leave Her To Heaven is a stylish psychological thriller starring Gene Tierney as Ellen, the stunningly beautiful wife of handsome writer Richard Harland, played by Cornel Wilde. Ellen panics as her perfect marriage unravels and Harland's work and invalid brother demand more and more of his attention. Her husband becomes unnerved by her compulsive and jealous behavior. And when the people close to him are murdered, one by one, it is obvious that this dream marriage has become a full-fledged nightmare. Based on the best-selling novel by Ben Ames Williams. This film won the Oscar(r) for Best Cinematography (Color) and received three other Academy Award(r) nominations: Best Actress for Gene Tierney, Best Sound Recording, and Best Art Direction (Color)/Interior Decoration.

Amazon.com
Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later, she's jettisoned rising-politico fiancé Vincent Price and accepted a marriage proposal the besotted/bewildered Wilde hasn't quite made. Can the wrecking of his and several other lives be far behind? Not to mention a murder or two.

Fox gave Ben Ames Williams's bestselling novel (probably just the sort of book Wilde's character writes) the Class-A treatment. Alfred Newman's tympani-heavy music score signals both grandeur and pervasive psychosis, while spectacular, dust-jacket-worthy locations and Oscar-destined Technicolor cinematography by Leon Shamroy ensure our fixed gaze. Impeccably directed by the veteran John M. Stahl (who'd made the original Back Street, Imitation of Life, and Magnificent Obsession a decade earlier), the result is at once cuckoo and hieratic, and weirdly mesmerizing. Bet Luis Buñuel loved it. --Richard T. Jameson

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 81 reviews)

Beautiful Poison...

Ellen (Gene Tierney) is a beautiful, intelligent young woman. She is outwardly perfect in every regard. Unfortunately, she is lacking some things internally. Ellen has no conscience. She also lacks compassion, empathy, and a few other human qualities. Ellen lives only to please herself, by any means necessary. Along comes a handsome, successful writer (Cornel Wilde) who catches Ellen's eye. She wants him, but wait, she's already engaged to be married to another man (Vincent Price). No problem! In Ellen's mind, all she needs to do is remove her engagement ring and move on. She'll marry the writer now. This comes as quite a shock to both men involved. This is just the way Ellen thinks and lives her life. No one else matters. They are all mere pawns to help her get her own satisfaction. Sometimes these pawns get in her way, as if they were of some importance. Ellen must find a way to deal w/ such naughty "people". She will have her way, no matter what she must do to achieve it. Her new husband's younger, handicapped brother is in Ellen's way. He won't stop bleeding away her husband's attention. He's needy. What will Ellen do to solve this problem? The answer to this question is the key to her blackened soul. As Cornel Wilde says later, she is a woman who is "capable of anything". LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN is a dark, sinister story, disturbing in it's malevolence. It must have been a genuine shocker in 1945! Gene Tierney plays Ellen so well it's frightening. She captures pure sociopathy in words, gestures, and glances that kill on contact. This is an ageless horror classic...
November 18, 2008

Leave Her to the 1940s

I was disappointed with Leave Her to Heaven after reading so many glowing reviews. It seemed too long, and it built far too slowly. Things didn't really get interesting until about an hour in.

Here's the kicker though: Would Vincent Price's character really be allowed to the be prosecuting attorney in a case involving the murder of his ex-fiancee? Is that not a massive conflict of interest? Maybe in the 1940s that wasn't a problem, but it sure threw the film's sense of realism for a loop.
October 21, 2008

Leave her to Heaven

This is a wonderful old movie, with greater substance than many we see today. Enjoy it as I did.
June 05, 2008

leave her to heaven

i got the dvd for my mother,she loves it,she said it is a great movie
May 02, 2008

"She loved her father too much"

Here's a quick note, if an engaged woman starts beaming about how much you remind her of her dead father, breaks her engagement within a few days, and tries to get you to marry her about a couple weeks(if that) of knowing each other, RUN!

There are two spectrums regarding the nightmare wife. One is is completely uncaring of her spouse and becomes a apathetic shrew, the other side is the excessively jealous wife who turns any other contact into a nightmare. Ellen was the latter. In her deranged mind, she's replacing the father whom she smothered and lead to an early grave, and her new husband is the replacement, and gets the same treatment as she destroys anyone who dares take his attention away from her. Just because someone is gone doesn't mean they can't still destroy you.

The plot is brilliantly paced, the final scene satisfying, and the acting(for the most part) is top notch. I was actually quite surprised at how dark this movie was given when it was made, so don't let the Technicolor fool you.
May 01, 2008

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