Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Leave Her to Heaven Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .or hell as the case may be.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 15, 2013

If Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchock had ever deigned to collaborate, the result might have been something very like Leave Her to Heaven, a sumptuous 1945 Fox film that was one of the studio’s major success stories during that legendary decade. Part psychological thriller and part roiling melodrama, Leave Her to Heaven was based on a huge bestseller that may have seemed a bit unusual to have become such a sensation in the halcyon days of a post- World War II America. Leave Her to Heaven is often cited as a kind of “bizarro world” take on film noir, a brightly (even candy) hued Technicolor extravaganza that manages to be almost oppressively claustrophobic despite its often wide open expanses settings. The film is a fascinating study in obsession and it contains at least one dynamite set piece that has the cool, collected shock value that is one of Hitchcock’s hallmarks. The Hitchcock comparison is especially apt, for as “scary” as many uninitiated people seem to think Hitchcock’s films are, they actually tend to deal more with the interior lives of their characters than might be evident from a cursory glance at some of Hitch’s most famous sequences. That’s why so many younger viewers are thrown for such a loop when they first see Psycho, having only been aware of the iconic shower scene and not realizing that’s one isolated moment in an otherwise often weirdly placid film. For this very same reason, these same younger viewers usually can’t even make it through something like Vertigo, another film which, much like Leave Her to Heaven, is an object study in obsession. But there are Sirkian elements here as well, notably in the roiling emotional undercurrents that swirl through the developing relationship and ultimate marriage of the film’s lead duo, socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) and author Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde).

They don’t quite bump each other’s feet a la Hitchcock’s classic Strangers on a Train, but the two main characters of Leave Her to Heaven do in fact meet on a locomotive when Ellen drops the book she’s been reading and Richard retrieves it for her. She mentions how much like her father he looks but Richard has more than making familial comparisons on his mind. When they get off the train, it turns out they’re both guests of Glen Robie (Ray Collins) at his expansive southwestern ranch and Ellen is chagrined to figure out that Richard is the author of the book she's been reading, one which she has mentioned she has found unimpressive. Things ultimately heat up so much between Ellen and Richard that she soon has a showdown with her fiancé, up and coming attorney Russell Quinton (Vincent Price), telling him it’s over, soon leading to a quick marriage to Richard.

Richard takes Ellen to meet his polio stricken little brother Danny (Darryl Hickman), who is recovering at the famous Warm Springs facility in Georgia. It’s here that Ellen’s obsessive attachment to her husband first really begins to show, as she begs Danny’s doctor to tell Richard that Danny would be better off staying at Warm Springs rather than returning to Richard’s beautiful lakeside cabin known as Behind the Moon. Danny does return home with Richard and Ellen, leading to one of the most chilling (and Hitchcockian) sequences in the film. Ellen’s method of dealing with Danny reveals how pathologically jealous she actually is, something that only slowly dawns on Richard and ultimately Ellen’s adopted sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain) as the film moves along with at least a couple of tragic deaths occurring in Ellen’s malicious wake.

Again like quite a few Hitchcock outings, Leave Her to Heaven takes its own sweet time setting up Ellen’s nefarious nature, and that may mean that some viewers will not have the patience to let the measured but relentless story unfold. Those who are Sirk fans, however, may well be distracted by the simmering, almost Freudian, tensions between Ellen and Ruth as well as the weird father figure fixation that Ellen has transferred to Richard. The fascinating thing about much of this is that Jo Swerling’s screenplay doesn’t really spell any of this out in black and white (or Technicolor, as the case may be)—it’s hinted at in such bizarre scenes as Ellen’s manically disposing of her late father’s ashes in a mad gallop across the southwestern plateaus on a horse. Mental illness has never seemed so picturesque, albeit disturbing.

It’s more than a little ironic that Gene Tierney, an actress who had her own celebrated battles with mental health, is so brilliantly duplicitous in this role, certainly one of her most challenging and unusual. Ellen is a villainess, absolutely despicable in what she does (or attempts to do), but who is also exotically alluring, even hypnotic, in her ability to sway those around her into believing she’s basically a grown up Pollyanna. This was Tierney’s only Oscar nomination in her long career, and it’s a fascinating performance, one that may strike modern day eyes as a bit too mannered, but which is undeniably powerful and unsettling.

The film has a rather interesting structure, with brief bookending segments that surround a long flashback that takes up the bulk of the film. That provides a chance for a little coda where Richard, who’s had more than his own share of tragedy due to his marriage to Ellen, finally gets the chance at a happy ending replete with an angelic choral cue courtesy of Alfred Newman.

Leave Her to Heaven Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Leave Her to Heaven is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Twilight Time with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. As has become legend in film preservation circles, the geniuses at Fox literally discarded all of their original Technicolor elements in the 1970s and so a glut of Fox classics that were originally released in Technicolor now exist courtesy of safety dupes. The difference is easily noticeable as even a cursory examination of the screenshots accompanying this review will show. The entire look of the film is a bit on the dark side, with flesh tones looking either peach colored or (more usually) brown enough at least at times that it almost appears that some of the cast is wearing the vaunted so-called "Egyptian" (or, considering this is a Twilight Time release, should that be Egyptian ?) makeup. Reds also tend to drift toward a brown tinged rust color, but blues probably look the best (the cerulean blue "woody" station wagon the troops drive to Robie's ranch in is a great example). If you can overlook colors that don't quite resemble "true" Technicolor, the rest of this high definition presentation is quite laudatory. Colors, while not what they really should be, are rather robust and nicely saturated and it's obvious that some attempt has been made to color time this to something akin to a kind of faux Technicolor. The image also boasts excellent fine detail for the bulk of the film's running time. Depth of field is frequently quite impressive in some of the location shots. This is certainly head and shoulders above the previous Fox Studio Classics DVD release in terms of sharpness and clarity, but some will still be shaking their heads over the shortsightedness of long ago Fox employees who were (let's just come out and say it) stupid enough to simply throw away some of the studio's most prized assets.

Leave Her to Heaven Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Leave Her to Heaven features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track that reveals some low level distortion in the lower midrange which is instantly noticeable in Alfred Newman's first cue (simply toggling to the isolated score track, which does not have this distortion, will reveal the easily audible difference). There's nothing too distracting about this anomaly, and it tends to diminish over the course of the film, but those with finely attuned listening ears will no doubt hear it. Dialogue is largely unhampered by the problem and remains generally cleanly presented. Aside from the minor distortion, fidelity is very good. Dynamic range is mostly limited to a couple of hyperbolic dramatic moments and Newman's score.

Leave Her to Heaven Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Richard Schickel and Darryl Hickman. These two were obviously recorded separately and then edited together. Schickel tends to concentrate on actor biographies and the production of the film while Hickman gives a more personal reminiscence of what being on set was like. He is not kind to Gene Tierney, let's just leave it at that.


• Isolated Score is presented via a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track, and while it has the typically boxy sound of this era's recording technology, it does not have the low level distortion that the main soundtrack exhibits.


• Theatrical Trailer (480p; 2:11)


• Movie Tone News (480p; 2:20) contains two brief snippets, one from the Los Angeles (pronounced with a hard "g", please) premiere of the film and another from that year's Oscars, with a really odd bit by Bob Hope.

Leave Her to Heaven Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Analysts and critics have been arguing over just which genre Leave Her to Heaven should be pigeonholed into. Is it a bizarre brighly colored noir? Is it a doomed romance? Is it a turgid melodrama? Well, yes, yes and yes. That's one (or perhaps three) of the reasons the film still is so fascinating to watch. It will strike some as too slow, with a too hyperbolic third act (especially once Vincent Price's crusading attorney springs into dunderheaded action), but the film has an inexorable power that is still undeniably effective. This Blu-ray features very good video (at least considering the elements that were at hand) and decent if occasionally problematic audio. The extras ported over from the Studio Classics DVD are also appreciated, as is the lustrous isolated score by the iconic Alfred Newman. Highly recommended.