leave her to heaven

one of my favorite movies from hollywood's golden age is leave her to heaven with gene tierney (one of the most gorgeous women of the era) and cornel wilde. it was the fatal attraction melodrama of its time, but much more quaint and subtle. no obsessed knife-wielding woman here; it's all in the crazed, desperate eyes of gene's character, ellen; her hands in knots as her desperate love for her husband gradually becomes more self-destructive.

there's some issues with the characterizations, taken into the context of the social mores of the time. women of a certain class in america spoke with a discernible north-atlantic accent, were impeccably groomed and dressed and only worked in the home or supervised work in the home. they were refined and educated solely for the purpose of marrying well. hollywood dished up this image of perfection for generations; much like the bad people pay for their bad ways and good people prevail or make saintly sacrifices narrative. there were no gray areas in the american experience (the production code adhered to this strictly through moral fascism and censorship). it was a simpler time; long before audiences became more sophisticated and the cultural landscape of america began to change.

what i love about this movie primarily is gene t. she's a scene stealer in her expressions and the subtle hits of mania hidden underneath her cool and appropriate exterior. she can say nothing and still drop a bomb on everyone in the room with her energy. by comparison, other actors do their parts effectively, but not quite so captivating. gene simply had the most interesting and complex role. her suffocating sense of love is explained through dialogue that she was fixated and obssesive over her father who has passed away. how she, her mother, and sister survived this creepy reverse-oedipal daddy issue drama is never really explored. her mother states, in some form of denial maybe, that 'there's nothing wrong with ellen, she just loves too much.'

in old hollywood lingo, love was the code word for everything good, salacious, evil, noble, sexual and destructive that motivated a human being to do anything. 'do you love her?'
'why yes, yes i do. quite desperately really.' translates into i want to fuck her so bad i can taste it.

the production design by art director Lyle R. Wheeler is stunning; the interiors are painstakingly detailed in the couple's lakeside house, back of the moon and the family's colonial beachfront cottage. one of the earlier color films (cinematographer Leon Shamroy won an Academy Award for his work), everything is in deeply saturated tones of blues, reds, browns, teals and yellows. fascinating to look at even though i doubt gene's lipstick palette actually existed in the real world; it beautifully contrasted or complimented her costume changes.

at the heart of the story is ellen's obsessive love for richard and lack of self. when richard's younger brother danny is given doctor's approval to live with them at back of the moon, ellen tries to no avail to talk his doctor out of it; feeling danny's presence an intrusion. her mother and sister come to visit, she becomes sullen and rude and then sees the friendly disposition between richard and her sister, ruth, as a threat.

ellen although beautiful and impeccable on the surface, is a train wreck of a human being. through a series of events she opportunistically either eliminates people richard also cares about or alienates them from their lives. she deliberately injures herself and miscarries their baby, seeing the baby as competition for richards's affection.

finally, the truth revealed of her twisted love for richard and her obsessive, destructive actions, he leaves her, but not without ellen taking one final bizarre act of revenge.

classic melodrama!
draq queen kitty