David Hast: Scott, have you seen Leave Her to Heaven?
Scott Vander Werf: I just saw Leave Her to Heaven and I really loved it.And I was surprised that I had never heard of this because I enjoy film noir so much and I've seen so many different types of film noir and I had never seen this and given that it's really the first, I'm assuming, color, not just color, but technicolor film noir.
DH: Yes, it is. Yeah, I would say it's the very first film noir that was shot in color, almost no movies that we call film noir are color. In fact, many people would say that's one of the basic requirements of a film noir, it has to be black and white. What do you think?
SVW: Well, yes, unless, you know, we understand about how the film noir in the classic sense ended in the50s, in the1950s. The modern films that emulate film noir are in color.
DH: Yeah, Chinatown movies like that, which are clearly film noir in every way except that they're contemporary and they're wider screen and they're color.
SVW: Yeah, so this would be the only film in terms of the historical context of the film noir genre that I've ever seen in color.
DH: I think it's the only one. There might be one or two others I've seen. I actually looked this up and there was a list. I found a list ofmovies thatthe person who made the list considered to be classic film noirs of the 40s and50s, but were color. There was literally onlyone other one in the40s, and there were only about 15 or 20 in the entire decade of the50s. So 15 or 20 total, I mean, out of hundreds and hundreds of film noirs that were made in those two decades. But this movie is, you know, we're referring to it as a noir because Leave Her to Heaven is a gripping, merciless crime drama likemany, many of the film noirs andit'sas shocking now as it might have been 80 years ago in some ways. It was also 20th Century Fox's top-grossing movie of the entire decade of the 1940s.
SVW: Oh wow, see now here's another example ofwhy didn't I hear about this film if it was so popular?
DH: Yeah, well it's iconic now butsowhat it is, Leave Her to Heavenis the story of this young woman named Ellen played by Jean Tierney, who is persuasive, beautiful, and always gets what she wants. One of the characters says she always wins.And in the first scene, she meets a writer, Richard, played by Cornell Wilde, and she quickly decides to marry him. It's all her idea, from the first kiss to the proposal to the whirlwind marriage, like two days later after she kisses him, and he seems just too awed by her to have much to say about it all. This is a classic noir trope, right? The femme fatale, you know, and then the sort of schlump that just goes along. She makes it clear that she expects everything in their lives to be under her control. She doesn't come across as like mean, but it's just, she's intensely possessive, jealous. And you can see right from the start. I think you'll agree with me. You can tell something's going to go wrong.
SVW: Well, and I would say though, from the, from the characterofRichard,it's not apparent, I think to him immediately. He does, it's, he doesn't seem to realize howcontrolling she is immediately.
DH: He never realizes until things go horribly wrong. But as viewers, you know, we've seen enough of these kinds of thrillers uh thatwe were like, oh, this is going to go wrong and but the fun end of this trying to guess what bad things she's going to do next and how she's going to do it.
SVW: The other thing that you haven't mentioned that is that she was actually engaged to a lawyer who's played by Vincent Price. She was engaged to get married to him, and she just abruptly decides that she's going to switch and marry this other guy. And you know it's like what youit's just happened so quickly it's like well this doesn't seem right.
DH: Right. She just does what seems like the thing to do at the time. But really, it is, as we've talked about it, being in technicolor, it's the look of this movie that, in a way, is the whole story. Because it's not just technicolor. It's like eye-popping, otherworldly kind of technicolor. I mean, just the whole look of it is just...Leon Chamroy was the director of photography, won the Oscar for it.
SVW: And there's great exterior photography too, in terms of that you see the out west and you see wonderful landscapes out west and then you see wonderful landscapes in Maine. And then you also see uh the Atlantic ocean front too.
DH: Well, that's the other thing too. I mean, this movie is like, it's like film noir in reverse. I mean, it's like flipped on its head because not only is it in color, but it's set rurally. It's all exteriors, almost all exteriors, brightly lit. There's almost no dark shadowy scenes in this movie, right? So it’s almost like the bright truth of sunlight has the same dark function that shadows and alleys have in most film noirs in cities. And you're right, it was actually shot, I mean, a lot of it shot in studios, the interiors, but they shot on location in Arizona for the scenes that are supposed to be New Mexico, I think. And then they shot on location in the Sierras for the scenes that are supposed to be Maine, like on a lake in the mountains. But yeah, just the design, the look of it, the production design, the cinematography are just, they would stand out as much as the performances and the story. And the other thing to keep in mind is it was an unusual use of color, right? So color movies, uh quick thumbnail of the history of color, there was actually experiments with color from the birth of cinema with people hand tinting by drawing on the film itself. And then there was a two-color process in the like twenties and thirties where it's not quite full color, like blue will be missing or whatever. But the first true, like three color, full color process was Technicolor. It was a movie called Becky Sharp in 1935. And so through the late 30s and into the 40s, Technicolor, first of all, is very expensive and it was very difficult to work with. And so it was reserved for certain kinds of movies, epics like Gone of the Wind or musicals like The Wizard of Oz. And so you didn't expect it in this kind of story. Which is also, I don't know how audiences reacted to it at the time, but they must have been caught off guard by it…
SVW: Well, could that have been one of the reasons that it was so popular?
DH: Sure, it helped, right, because they would really advertise. They would show that in trailers and stuff. They would make a big deal of it if the movie was color. Because it wasn't, I don't know when the break even point was, when 50 % of the movies, more than 50% of the movies were color. I would guess that was not until the 1960s.
SVW: I would guess that as well because there are still a number of films that, famous films that are in black and white that were made in the 60s.
DH: Yeah, I mean, and look at the50s. The 50s is still mostly black and white.There are a lot more color films with them, but in the 40s, very few. But this one, I mean, would you agree with me that it's almost likethere are these like tableaus, like they'll have a scene where people sit and now it's just a set shot and it almost looks like a hyper-realist painting or something.
SVW: Yeah, no, I totally see that.
DH: Yeah, I mean, and what this does is the movie is so pleasurable visually. It's so interesting to look at that it leaves you wondering just exactly how you're supposed to think about it when these unbelievably terrible things happen. And I think this is probably true in all film noir in a way, know,film noir is in many ways, when you say, what is a film noir? Well, there's usually crime involved and it's usually urban andall that. And there's certain types of characters. But one thing that also is associated with film noir is a very pleasurable visual style, right?The contrast, the black and white, the dark and the shadow. Film noir, noir means dark, black film. And so the blacks are very much emphasized and then the contrast with the slashes of light and stuff. But the fact that this happens mostly like outdoors in broad daylight, not in a grimy city street. This contradiction of the beauty of the way it looks, with the terrible crime stuff andpsychological horror that's happening.
SVW: Well, the horrible things that are going on in the interior of this one character. The female lead, uh Gene Tierney's character. has horrible things going on within her. And even she recognizes it at different points and types.She actually speaks it out loud at different dramatic parts in the movie and realizes that she's not actually a normal person.
DH: No, she's, I mean, she really is mentally ill, but she still, it doesn't stop her from doinglying and doing incredibly terrible things.
SVW: In some ways it's not the same motivation, but it reminded me of the talented Mr. Ripley.
DH: Hmm, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah, she's akind of psychopathic character like the Ripley character. But when we're talking about the beauty of the movie, have to talk about Gene Tierney. Gene Tierney, Daryl Zanuck, who was the 20th Century Fox producer who produced this movie and who discovered her. And she's in several movies. She's in the great film noir Laura, justright around the same time, also with Vincent Price. It's a black and white film noir. But Gene Tierney, Daryl Zanuck considered her the most beautiful actress of all time and although this character ranks with the coldest most diabolicalfemme fatales in all of film noir and therefore in all of movie history. Her beauty is almost part of it right that the way she looks. Iwas I saw Martin Scorsese commentary, has that done commentary on like every movie in the world? But he said this is the quote: “Her face is a mask of perfect composure.” And it's true, she always looks perfectly under control, perfectly glamorous.She shows very little emotion for most of the time. She wears this bright red lipstick. I rewatched and looked at this. There was only one shot, I think, or one scene in the entire movie where she isn't wearing bright red lipstick, and there's a reason for it there, but even that one, she's still got some lipstick, but it's almost like her face is a is a character all by itself. People have written whole essays on the way Gene Tierney looks in this movie.
SVW: And the very first scene when Richard meets her there on a train and he's sitting across from her and he's looking at her face and that's what well she's also reading his book. He's a writer, but he's looking at her face. Yeah, as we are looking at her face
DH: And she's just staring at him too well.
SVW: And that's the intimation of what's to come. Which all of a sudden she's focused on him. And we really don't know why is she focusing on him. And it's just how quickly, I mean there's a couple of scenes later, they're engaged to get married.
DH: Yeah, and the explanation, you know, they make a plausible explanation so you don't suspect her too much. Like, you're right, as viewers we're like, this is really weird the way she's just staring at him. It's a little creepy, but she's holding his book and we can see the dust jacket and we can see the picture of him on the back of the book. And soonce that gets revealed, then we're like, oh, that's why she was staring. But like you said, within a couple of scenes, we already see, yeah, there's something wrong with her.
SVW: And also, you talked about the femme fatale and the femme fatale usually has a certain thing that they're after that's prettysimilar from film to film, but with her, she's not after money. She's not plotting any scheme to manipulate.It's all from the interior of her, the things that she can't control.
DH: Yes. Yeah. She's trying to act like the perfect wife, but it's all a performance. And you're right. In film noir, it’sthe femme fatale is after money or some kind of complexcrime scheme that involves drawing in the man. She's not doing any of that. There's nothing illegal except certain the bad things happen in the movie, but it's not like crime for money. It's just complete desire to control and be possessive.
SVW: So, you know, in terms of what you mentioned earlier, when we started this, were you saying it's just as gripping 80 years later as when it was made. One of the things that I pointed out to somebody after I saw it was this would be a movie that even if it was made today that it would still be as disturbing in terms of focusing in on this character of this woman. It would still be a disturbing film even though there are aspects of it because it was made in the mid-40s. You know there there's things that are going to be dated the things have changed but you could remake this film very easily and it would still be equally as disturbing.
DH: Yeah I think someone did try to remake it and it probably wasn't a good version because anytime anyone tries to remake a really great film, usually doesn't succeed.Out of the Past was remade, right, with Richard Gere.
SVW: Yeah, it was just awful.
DH: Yeah, it's like, don't mess with it. But do you think part of the reason why you think it would work now,besides the performances, is the look of it?I was thinking more along the lines of this, you could remake it with the same motivation of the character and the same sort of progression of when you how you because as a viewer just like Richard you know before Richard which we know something as the viewer before Richard realizes that something's not right here, but it's still unfolds for us we don't quite know what it is in it and all the surprises for himin a lot of ways are the surprises for us and that's what I'm that's what I'm really talking about not so much the look of the film although you know the way that modern cinematographers can do nature and exteriors. It would be different obviously without the the technicolor…
DH: But I do feel like there's a lot of really great crime stories But I feel like what makes this one really workWorth watching is besides the fact that it's a good crime story and good performances. It has a stunning look That's what makes it worth it, and unlike other films in its sort of category.
SVW: Yeah, and I saw it streaming off of a channel,a streaming channel. I didn't see it on the big screen and I was still struck by how great it looked.
DH: Yeah, you want to see a good print of it. know, watch it on Blu-ray or watch it on a streaming service. Don’t watch something...
SVW: With a great TV.
