
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) is one of the odder mainstream American films I’ve seen from the 1940s. Its plot involves the archetypes and interest in the dark side of humanity that are trademarks of film noir, but boasts colorful cinematography that feels like it belongs in a 1950s melodrama. The pacing isn’t even, but lurches from luxuriation in the character dynamics to wild plot twists. But what truly makes this film wonderfully unusual is Gene Tierney’s indelible, powerhouse performance as the female lead.
Like many a good thriller, especially one which you could argue is film noir, Leave Her to Heaven is about a man who gets caught in the crosshairs of a woman. Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) is a young novelist who meets a socialite named Ellen Berent (Tierney) on a train. Berent becomes infatuated with Harland, and soon proposes to him. She adores him, but her love soon becomes a dangerous obsession. Berent decides that she won’t let anyone, whether it’s Harland’s disabled younger brother Danny (Darryl Hickman) or their unborn child, get in the way of her desire to have Harland all to herself.

In less imaginative hands, Berent could have come off as solely a riff on the femme fatale archetype. But while the filmmakers do use elements of that character type, she feels more complex than you would expect. Most femme fatales are initially likeable, but that mask often falls away so quickly. Not so in Leave Her to Heaven. Tierney uses every ounce of her charisma to get you to like Berent, at least in the first half of the film. She plays up her love for Harland, her athleticism, and her independence. Berent’s later descent into madness — including what she does to Danny — is all the more affecting for the strange charm Tierney and the filmmakers gave her.
But even from the beginning, the filmmakers and Tierney drop hints about her true colors. The most memorable one is that Berent falls in love with Harland because he bears a striking resemblance to her late father. But Tierney also uses smaller gestures to convey Berent’s darker side, such as the way she rubs her thumb before privately insulting Danny to a doctor or waking up Harland by repeatedly blowing on his face. Her exceptional physical acting reaches a crescendo in a scene on top of a staircase that is still as suspenseful today as when it came out, as close-ups enable you to drink in every stunning micro-expression on Berent’s face.
Tierney’s performance remains memorable in part because she is playing the type of character which you don’t see enough of even today. Berent is a complicated anti-heroine who does horrible things to cope with the trauma of losing her father and her fear of losing Harland. She’s likeable and despicable at the same time, memorable in both her vulnerabilities and her ironclad desires. It’s not surprising that Tierney received an Academy Award nomination for this performance. What’s surprising is that she didn’t win.

Leave Her to Heaven screens at IU Cinema on November 14 at as part of the Sunday Matinee Classics: A Century of Tierney series. The fifth and final film in the series will be Laura on December 5.

Jesse Pasternack is a graduate of Indiana University. During his time at IU, Jesse was the co-president of the Indiana Student Cinema Guild. He also wrote about film, television, and pop culture for the Indiana Daily Student. Jesse has been a moderator at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival and is a friend of the Doug Loves Movies podcast. An aspiring professional writer-director, his own film work has appeared at Campus Movie Fest and the Anthology Film Archives in New York City.