‘A film seemingly made in a trance and best seen in a state of fever,’ says David Thomson in his Biographical Dictionary of Film. ‘A fever dream,’ echoed Anthony Lane in a recent New Yorker review of the film’s revival in NY. John M Stahl was best known for his pre-Sirk, black-and-white romantic melodramas (known as ’women’s pictures’), such as Back Street and Imitation of Life, before he took this exhilarating and delirious plunge into what Thomson calls ‘self-destructive Technicolor emotionalism’. And it is Technicolor which is the key to the outrageously entertaining noir extremism of Leave Her to Heaven, with Gene Tierney, as its monstrous heroine, clearly born to be photographed in three-strip Technicolor, her lips (in Lane’s phrase) ‘as red as a witch’s apple’. Tierney is Ellen, a selfish and obsessed woman with a father complex which she acts out on husband Richard (Cornel Wilde), while her more naturally affectionate sister (Jeanne Crain) stands on the sidelines. ’There’s nothing wrong with Ellen, she just loves too much,’ her mother re-assures Richard, before Ellen, in fits of paranoid jealousy, coldly allows her disabled brother to drown and then aborts Richard’s baby by throwing herself down the stairs. Over-the-top in every enjoyable sense. The Academy Film Archive is responsible for this fine and essential recuperation of Oscar-winning cameraman Leon Shamroy’s sumptuous Technicolor photography, supported by funding from the Film Foundation. —bfi
John Malcolm Stahl (January 21, 1886 – January 12, 1950) was an American film director and producer.
Born in New York City, New York, he began working in the city’s growing motion picture industry at a young age and directed his first silent film short in 1914. In the early 1920s Stahl signed on with Louis B. Mayer Pictures in Hollywood and in 1924 was part of the Mayer team that became MGM Studios.
In 1927, John Stahl was one of the thirty-six founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. With the industry’s transition to talkies and feature-length films, John Stahl successfully made the adjustment and for Universal Pictures he directed the 1934 film Imitation of Life which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. The following year, he directed Magnificent Obsession, starring Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor.
John Stahl continued to produce and direct major productions as well filler shorts right up to the time of his death. Some… read more
There are few things that get me going like a Technicolor melodrama. This, while having some quirks, remains one of the most magnificent examples of this. In a way, I feel magnificent is the only way to describe it, what the filmmakers had in mind when they made this. As I've said, it's not perfect, but Gene Tierney is remarkable and in the end, the film is very enjoyable.
Straightforward and melodramatic story of jealousy and possessiveness masquerading as love. Beautiful Technicolor cinematography of lovely people and places lends a hint of post card picture artifice to the whole endeavor. The sort of thing one might expect as an indie release these days but a rather startling - and startlingly successful - film from a major studio in the 40s
This movie is amazing...if for nothing else Gene Tierny, and how magnificently evil and beautiful she is in Technicolor.
“La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall!” so goes the old song. John Stahl’s masterpiece shot in intensely saturated technicolor is one of the most frightening and modern Hollywood films… read review
