Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

“The walls are as thin as paper and the acoustics disgustingly perfect” – Ellen Berent Harland

Number of Times Seen – 1 (2 Dec 2019)

Brief Synopsis – An author falls in love wit h a woman who becomes overly attached to him to a point where she is jealous of any attention that anyone else pays him.

My Take on it –  This is a movie that I had never heard of before coming across it during my recent endeavor to watch and review all movies that have garnered Oscar nominations in the acting categories.

This film’s story is played out really well especially since it goes places that one would never expect.

The cast is great with both Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde giving superb performances in this film.

The chemistry that they have together helps make their courtship, marriage and everything along the way feel so real and plausible.

They do a great job showing the kind of life that characters like these live and at the same time, we get to see how dark and deep secrets can affect things in life in ways we can never expect.

Tierney’s character is quite complex and it’s really no surprise that she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her work here.

Wilde’s character is also created really well and once we get to see the true nature of the characters and what really is going on, things get even more intense.

The choice to tell this story almost entirely via a flashback helps enhance things to another level because we get to see how the mystery of this story works due to the various twists and turns along the way.

Bottom Line – Great story that goes places one would never expect. Tierney and Wilde are both superb here and help make us believe their courtship, their marriage and everything that happens along the way. The story does a nice job showing the life of characters like these and allows us to see some of the deep and dark secrets that they must keep in order for things to work for them. Tierney is superb in this film and plays her character so well that it’s no surprise that she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her work here.  Wilde is equally as good especially once we get to see the true nature of these characters.  The way that this story is told almost entirely in flashback works really well in enhancing the mystery of the story since it gives us some nice twists and turns along the way. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – For the proposal scene, Cornel Wilde had trouble reacting convincingly to Gene Tierney’s advances, but each time they did a take the crew was so impressed, they whistled at her. Finally, John M. Stahl said to Wilde, “They all seem to understand how the scene should be played. Why can’t you?”(From IMDB)

Rating – Globe Worthy (8/10)

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