I'm including this post here because Martin Scorces called this a color film with a heart that was pure noir.
10-12-07 Leave Her to Heaven - Special Screening of restored print by the Film Foundation at the 45th Annual NY Film Festival, Lincoln Center.
That first look at Gene on the big screen when she lowers the book that has been hiding her beautiful face actually made the audience "gasp" audibly. Her character is altogether more potent and fierce when you see it magnified several times, I don't think a TV screen entirely does it justice. I picked up innumerable details which aren't as discernable on TV, such as the color palette of Gene's wardrobe. In his opening remarks, Scorcese said that he used this film as a kind of template for the colors he would use in movies like New York, New York and The Aviator. In the latter film, he also used Gene's costumes in Heaven as a basis for the wardrobe of Ava Gardner's character (a strange connection between two of my favorite actresses). He was very funny about his experience at first seeing LHTH on television in the late '70s. He apparently was suffering a bad bout of asthma and woke up in the middle of the night to see Gene's face "floating" at him and he became enamoured of the movie's emotional power. (Can you tell I just love this guy's enthusiasm for movies?). Anyway, back to Gene's wardrobe---I kept thinking about how Hitchcock loved to use certain colors in his movies to represent different emotions, specifically green and red. Gene's wardrobe is almost exclusively within the blue and red palette---with one exception: she wears a warm, cozy camel-hair robe during her pregnancy.
I got chills from looking at her expression when she let Danny drown, the whole audience was gasping again for a completely different reason. They weren't always so appreciative, at times they laughed and sniggered when the drama tickled them (made me want to stand up in the middle of the auditorium and screen at them to be quiet, there was nothing funny about it!) but in the moments when Gene had to come up with the kind of goods few actresses posses, like in the drowning scene and when she is about to trip herself up, everyone was riveted. Her eyes really darken with a kind of hurtful terror as she gets ready to pitch herself down the stairs---it's something to behold in a theater.
Scorcese was full of remarks about the restoration of this film (and of Mohawk) and said last night's screening at the Film Festival was the first of a series of appearances around the country these films will be making (peeps, keep your eyes open if Gene is coming to your town). What I didn't get a finger on was whether the print we just saw is the same that was used for the dvd already out. I am assuming it is, since that dvd is quite pristine looking.
My companion thought the movie a combination of Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk. All in all, a remarkable time spent with a lovely, frighteningly effective young actress.
P.S. The house in Taos was just so gorgeous---I've always liked it tremendously and thought the dcor and colors were so attractive. All the different houses in this film are so distinct and original and I suppose are characters, in a way, themselves.
Leave Her to Heaven
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MissGoddess
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Sue Sue Applegate
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Thanks, Miss G., for the first person account!
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Thelma Ritter: Hollywood's Favorite New Yorker, University Press of Mississippi-2023
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Thelma Ritter: Hollywood's Favorite New Yorker, University Press of Mississippi-2023
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moira finnie
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Thanks for sharing this enviable experience, Miss G. Are you planning on attending any other events such as this soon? Can we count on another first person account?
I am fascinated by the perverse willfulness of Tierney's character in Leave Her to Heaven. I thought that the film dramatized the psychological plight and the consequences of being a human who had never completely grown up, nor fully developed a heart and a conscience. It's almost as though she had an infant's frustrated desire to control her environment, and lawd help anyone who thwarted it.
Also, Gene Tierney's character didn't have any form of expression as a person outside of loving her father and then her husband. (Even her sister Jeanne Crain could garden, help Cornel Wilde with his book and help to create a nursery for her would be niece or nephew. She'd learned to be a useful, malleable creature in her very restricted little upper middle class world) No wonder poor Gene Tierney's character was twisted.
Say, did the audience start yukking it up during the scene when Gene tosses her Dad's ashes from their urn while on horseback? That's the scene that usually gets my friends a-giggling. I, however, seem to take on a goofy mantle of solemnity during this wonderfully over the top sequence. The other one that cracks my loved ones up is during Vincent Price's emoting in the courtroom. Ah well, à chacun son goût, as they say...it's sad watching movies with philistines!! Even funny ones.
Have you listened to the dvd commentary for this film? Darryl Hickman has a very different take on the whole film. I think the only people he really respected on the movie were the cinematographer Leon Shamroy, Chill Wills and Cornel Wilde. Apparently Hickman found Ms. Tierney uncooperative and snappish during the filming. Given the fact that Darryl Hickman had a helluva time trying to film the drowning sequence and found director John Stahl unsympathetic too, it's pretty understandable from a pressured teenage kid's viewpoint.
I think that he was far too young to understand all the pressure, professionally and psychologically, that Gene Tierney must've been experiencing during this time. Playing a superficially unsympathetic young woman, I also wonder if she absorbed some of her character's coldness off-camera as well?
It's one of those commentaries that I have mixed feelings about listening to afterwards. Still, a fascinating movie, and there's no denying Gene Tierney's presence on film. Here's one of those Southwestern interiors you rhapsodized about pictured below. Btw, I think that we could write a book about the beauty of 20th Century Fox art direction in the '40s. The art direction for this landmark color movie was by Maurice Ransford & Lyle R. Wheeler. The set decorators in this movie were the unheralded Thomas Little & Ernest Lansing. The exceptional work of such craftsmen is hardly ever mentioned--but should be.
Please note Gene in pure white here and the looming male figure (Cornel Wilde) in the foreground:
I am fascinated by the perverse willfulness of Tierney's character in Leave Her to Heaven. I thought that the film dramatized the psychological plight and the consequences of being a human who had never completely grown up, nor fully developed a heart and a conscience. It's almost as though she had an infant's frustrated desire to control her environment, and lawd help anyone who thwarted it.
Also, Gene Tierney's character didn't have any form of expression as a person outside of loving her father and then her husband. (Even her sister Jeanne Crain could garden, help Cornel Wilde with his book and help to create a nursery for her would be niece or nephew. She'd learned to be a useful, malleable creature in her very restricted little upper middle class world) No wonder poor Gene Tierney's character was twisted.
Say, did the audience start yukking it up during the scene when Gene tosses her Dad's ashes from their urn while on horseback? That's the scene that usually gets my friends a-giggling. I, however, seem to take on a goofy mantle of solemnity during this wonderfully over the top sequence. The other one that cracks my loved ones up is during Vincent Price's emoting in the courtroom. Ah well, à chacun son goût, as they say...it's sad watching movies with philistines!! Even funny ones.
Have you listened to the dvd commentary for this film? Darryl Hickman has a very different take on the whole film. I think the only people he really respected on the movie were the cinematographer Leon Shamroy, Chill Wills and Cornel Wilde. Apparently Hickman found Ms. Tierney uncooperative and snappish during the filming. Given the fact that Darryl Hickman had a helluva time trying to film the drowning sequence and found director John Stahl unsympathetic too, it's pretty understandable from a pressured teenage kid's viewpoint.
I think that he was far too young to understand all the pressure, professionally and psychologically, that Gene Tierney must've been experiencing during this time. Playing a superficially unsympathetic young woman, I also wonder if she absorbed some of her character's coldness off-camera as well?
It's one of those commentaries that I have mixed feelings about listening to afterwards. Still, a fascinating movie, and there's no denying Gene Tierney's presence on film. Here's one of those Southwestern interiors you rhapsodized about pictured below. Btw, I think that we could write a book about the beauty of 20th Century Fox art direction in the '40s. The art direction for this landmark color movie was by Maurice Ransford & Lyle R. Wheeler. The set decorators in this movie were the unheralded Thomas Little & Ernest Lansing. The exceptional work of such craftsmen is hardly ever mentioned--but should be.
Please note Gene in pure white here and the looming male figure (Cornel Wilde) in the foreground:
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Mr. Arkadin
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Great insights MissG. & Moira! Leave Her to Heaven is my favorite GT movie. Tierney has a great role here that benefits from her beauty, but unlike most of her other work--her beauty does not overwhelm the part. Instead it works hand in hand with her acting which is mostly what she does not say and comes down to facial movement and body language.
The picture is gorgeous looking and the film is in no hurry to get where it's going. It reminds me very much of a recent viewing of The Secret Beyond the Door which also resembles a waking dream.
As was stated, there are some elements here which one can find camp or humor. That's totally true, but I will say Leave Her to Heaven is one of those few films that I can find funny or tragic depending on my emotions and state of being at whatever time I'm watching. All films work off our perceptions to some extent, but LHTH is one of the few I can pop in and which always seems to mirror my mood.
The picture is gorgeous looking and the film is in no hurry to get where it's going. It reminds me very much of a recent viewing of The Secret Beyond the Door which also resembles a waking dream.
As was stated, there are some elements here which one can find camp or humor. That's totally true, but I will say Leave Her to Heaven is one of those few films that I can find funny or tragic depending on my emotions and state of being at whatever time I'm watching. All films work off our perceptions to some extent, but LHTH is one of the few I can pop in and which always seems to mirror my mood.
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MissGoddess
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Apologies, Moira, that I haven't replied to you before this. I don't receive notifications anymore from SSO for some reason, so I apparently have overlooked a number of threads lately.
Say, did the audience start yukking it up during the scene when Gene tosses her Dad's ashes from their urn while on horseback? That's the scene that usually gets my friends a-giggling. I, however, seem to take on a goofy mantle of solemnity during this wonderfully over the top sequence. The other one that cracks my loved ones up is during Vincent Price's emoting in the courtroom. Ah well, à chacun son goût, as they say...it's sad watching movies with philistines!! Even funny ones.
You are more patient or understanding than I. My problem---and it is my problem---is that I watch these movies from a strictly UN-ironic point of view, precisely as many in the original audiences may have. The vast majority of New York film goers seem to have a heavily ironic and superior attitude toward most older films, and laugh at them not beause they genuinely find them funny, but because they are terrified of seeming to be not hip or with it and different from the pack. I really was hot under the collar when they laughed during the funeral scene, even though I can understand, grudgingly, why they would from their piont of view. But their point of view sucks and I don't mind telling it.
Have you listened to the dvd commentary for this film? Darryl Hickman has a very different take on the whole film. I think the only people he really respected on the movie were the cinematographer Leon Shamroy, Chill Wills and Cornel Wilde. Apparently Hickman found Ms. Tierney uncooperative and snappish during the filming. Given the fact that Darryl Hickman had a helluva time trying to film the drowning sequence and found director John Stahl unsympathetic too, it's pretty understandable from a pressured teenage kid's viewpoint.
I think that he was far too young to understand all the pressure, professionally and psychologically, that Gene Tierney must've been experiencing during this time. Playing a superficially unsympathetic young woman, I also wonder if she absorbed some of her character's coldness off-camera as well?
His is the commentary I point out when I wish to emphasize what I object to in film commentaries in general. I was annoyed as heck by his comments, I felt he was a prissy little prat who hadn't matured one jot since he made the darn movie and I am not surprised if I learn one day that Gene wanted to really let him drown.
Gene has gotten slammed in every commentary I've heard on each of her Fox films on dvd. Which is a shame, because, excuse me, how did she become such a big star and why is she still beloved? I think she gave the performance of her career in LHTH and in The Razor's Edge.
As for my feelings about the story itself of Leave Her to Heaven, I actually think the movie is an improvement of the book in many ways, except that we get a little more inkling of what, for instance, made Ellen agree to marry the district attorney in the first place (in the novel, he's an older man and she thought he reminded her in some ways of her father---to wit, she was always searching for a man to replace her father).
If the story has any major flaw, it's the weakness of the other characters, especially Ellen's mother. She should have put a stop to all that nonsensical behavior from the start but instead seems to have been in fear of Ellen all her life. Ridiculous. It might have saved Ellen had she behaved stronger. Everyone just gives in to her all the time and I find that amazing.
Say, did the audience start yukking it up during the scene when Gene tosses her Dad's ashes from their urn while on horseback? That's the scene that usually gets my friends a-giggling. I, however, seem to take on a goofy mantle of solemnity during this wonderfully over the top sequence. The other one that cracks my loved ones up is during Vincent Price's emoting in the courtroom. Ah well, à chacun son goût, as they say...it's sad watching movies with philistines!! Even funny ones.
You are more patient or understanding than I. My problem---and it is my problem---is that I watch these movies from a strictly UN-ironic point of view, precisely as many in the original audiences may have. The vast majority of New York film goers seem to have a heavily ironic and superior attitude toward most older films, and laugh at them not beause they genuinely find them funny, but because they are terrified of seeming to be not hip or with it and different from the pack. I really was hot under the collar when they laughed during the funeral scene, even though I can understand, grudgingly, why they would from their piont of view. But their point of view sucks and I don't mind telling it.
Have you listened to the dvd commentary for this film? Darryl Hickman has a very different take on the whole film. I think the only people he really respected on the movie were the cinematographer Leon Shamroy, Chill Wills and Cornel Wilde. Apparently Hickman found Ms. Tierney uncooperative and snappish during the filming. Given the fact that Darryl Hickman had a helluva time trying to film the drowning sequence and found director John Stahl unsympathetic too, it's pretty understandable from a pressured teenage kid's viewpoint.
I think that he was far too young to understand all the pressure, professionally and psychologically, that Gene Tierney must've been experiencing during this time. Playing a superficially unsympathetic young woman, I also wonder if she absorbed some of her character's coldness off-camera as well?
His is the commentary I point out when I wish to emphasize what I object to in film commentaries in general. I was annoyed as heck by his comments, I felt he was a prissy little prat who hadn't matured one jot since he made the darn movie and I am not surprised if I learn one day that Gene wanted to really let him drown.
Gene has gotten slammed in every commentary I've heard on each of her Fox films on dvd. Which is a shame, because, excuse me, how did she become such a big star and why is she still beloved? I think she gave the performance of her career in LHTH and in The Razor's Edge.
As for my feelings about the story itself of Leave Her to Heaven, I actually think the movie is an improvement of the book in many ways, except that we get a little more inkling of what, for instance, made Ellen agree to marry the district attorney in the first place (in the novel, he's an older man and she thought he reminded her in some ways of her father---to wit, she was always searching for a man to replace her father).
If the story has any major flaw, it's the weakness of the other characters, especially Ellen's mother. She should have put a stop to all that nonsensical behavior from the start but instead seems to have been in fear of Ellen all her life. Ridiculous. It might have saved Ellen had she behaved stronger. Everyone just gives in to her all the time and I find that amazing.
First off, let me say I saw LHTH years ago, but couldn't remember the name so until I saw it recently, I couldn't comment on it. Now I've seen it a couple of times in the past year and I like it better each time.
As for Gene's beauty. I think they needed an extraordinarily beautiful woman to play this part, her beauty is why people kept letting her get away with being such an awful specimen of humanity. People couldn't conceive of such a lovely woman actually doing the things they suspected in the back of their minds. I say back, because they couldn't really voice such horrible suspicions. Cornell Wilde loved her so how could he concede to the thought that she would kill his little, beloved brother?
Recently, I can't recall where, I saw an example of an actor keeping in character off stage. Of course I know what that is, and I know a lot of actors use that method. I'm not saying Gene did, but considering she knew how she would have to act and look during the drowning scene, as well as some of the other lesser ones, perhaps she never allowed herself to become even fond of Darryl for just that reason, and he never got it. If that is the case, I have to agree with Miss G about his immature - never grew up attitude.
As for audience response, that is why I rarely try to convert. I know even myself at times get irritated with certain things. Det. Faraday e.g. in Lone Wolfe movies. I know the series is a comedic example of detective work, but to make the police officer such a buffoon is not o.k. with me. I don't care if it's a TV show, or a scary movie, EVERY time the heroine goes into the dark cellar, or attic alone irritates me to no end. I don't mind admitting I'm somewhat of a chicken, but I think most women in those cases, are going to wait for someone else to tag along, and it never failed when women were the lead, they had no fear - hah.
Anne
As for Gene's beauty. I think they needed an extraordinarily beautiful woman to play this part, her beauty is why people kept letting her get away with being such an awful specimen of humanity. People couldn't conceive of such a lovely woman actually doing the things they suspected in the back of their minds. I say back, because they couldn't really voice such horrible suspicions. Cornell Wilde loved her so how could he concede to the thought that she would kill his little, beloved brother?
Recently, I can't recall where, I saw an example of an actor keeping in character off stage. Of course I know what that is, and I know a lot of actors use that method. I'm not saying Gene did, but considering she knew how she would have to act and look during the drowning scene, as well as some of the other lesser ones, perhaps she never allowed herself to become even fond of Darryl for just that reason, and he never got it. If that is the case, I have to agree with Miss G about his immature - never grew up attitude.
As for audience response, that is why I rarely try to convert. I know even myself at times get irritated with certain things. Det. Faraday e.g. in Lone Wolfe movies. I know the series is a comedic example of detective work, but to make the police officer such a buffoon is not o.k. with me. I don't care if it's a TV show, or a scary movie, EVERY time the heroine goes into the dark cellar, or attic alone irritates me to no end. I don't mind admitting I'm somewhat of a chicken, but I think most women in those cases, are going to wait for someone else to tag along, and it never failed when women were the lead, they had no fear - hah.
Anne
Anne
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MissGoddess
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Perhaps I should have been more clear, sorry, I was referring strictly to what commentators have said about Gene's skills as an actress or her contributions to film. By and large, personal comments about Gene have been fairly positive or neutral.JohnM wrote:MissGoddess wrote: Gene has gotten slammed in every commentary I've heard on each of her Fox films on dvd. Which is a shame, because, excuse me, how did she become such a big star and why is she still beloved?
The public's perception of a star, and the reality of that star, are almost always different. Barbra Streisand is a big star and beloved, but I'm sure you could find any number of people who would have something negative to say about working with her.
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MissGoddess
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Hi John,JohnM wrote:To say she was staying in character, even during the breaks in filming, is a cop-out. It's also the sure sign of someone who can't act, and the absolute height of immaturity of her part, especially when it comes to dealing with someone who isn't an adult."
May I respectfully add that even Hickman himself couldn't really offer anything stronger to criticize about Gene's off-camera behavior than that it was distant and cool. Why should she be anything else with him, if it helped her stay in character? Some of the best actors have done this and it is understandable if amusing (I love Olivier's reactions to Hoffman's antics) in some cases. In Gene's case, an actress admittedly not the strongest in the world, it's clearly understandable at least from hindsight. The reason Hickman's comments come off as obnoxious is that he sounds like he holds a grudge. Also, he is patronizing. He teaches acting and so this is not surprising, I've experienced the gamut of that type and it's astonishing how much more egotistical the acting guru is in comparison to the acting professional. His patronizing tone toward Gene's behavior and skills was never backed up by sensible and specific ciritcism and instead seemed to stem from the kind of personal resentment that many acting coaches carry with them for a lifetime.
He was a whiner, and I guess I just have no patience with such people.
Hi Miss G.
Doesn't it also make sense to keep an actor off-balance as part of the characters interaction? She was going to KILL the kid, and he was supposed to be a trusting, naive child. When he tried harder to please her, she withdrew more and more from him. At least, it makes sense to me. (and I am no actor, just an interested bystander to this debate)
Nancy
Doesn't it also make sense to keep an actor off-balance as part of the characters interaction? She was going to KILL the kid, and he was supposed to be a trusting, naive child. When he tried harder to please her, she withdrew more and more from him. At least, it makes sense to me. (and I am no actor, just an interested bystander to this debate)
Nancy
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MissGoddess
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Good point, Nancy, and it is possible this was one reasoning behind her behavior. The director or an acting advisor could have suggested she keep herslelf distant. Directors have done so often with cast members to get the right kind of chemistry or reactions.knitwit45 wrote:Hi Miss G.
Doesn't it also make sense to keep an actor off-balance as part of the characters interaction? She was going to KILL the kid, and he was supposed to be a trusting, naive child. When he tried harder to please her, she withdrew more and more from him. At least, it makes sense to me. (and I am no actor, just an interested bystander to this debate)
Nancy
Considering that up to LHTH most of Darryl's work was 'so and so as a boy', he hadn't yet spent a lot of time on set, or stage. This being a pretty intense plot line, as well as the relationship between Gene's and Darryl's characters being as strained as it was, I'm sure that whole set couldn't have been too happy-go-lucky as it is. I mean he had been a fun kid in Meet Me In St Louis for the Halloween skit, one of the boys of Boys Town, and in a few comedies, so he was probably used to laughs and joking around, then suddenly he's cast as the only youngster with a bunch of adults playing very serious roles wherein some co-workers are more kid friendly than others. Memories are funny things. My kids laugh at some of the family memories, but I look at the same experiences as trials and tribulations. So perhaps the years have heightened Darryl's perceptions of Gene's rejection.
Anne
Anne
Anne
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moira finnie
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Ann and Nancy's points about Darryl Hickman's perception of the film being that of a youngster when this movie was made seems pretty valid to me. John Stahl, the director of LHTH, also was reportedly never happy with Hickman's efforts and he probably felt pressured to make the kid ask "how high?" when he yelled "jump." From what I recall of the dvd commentary, Hickman (in his '70s now) is still trying to put his child actor experiences in some perspective. Since going to work at age 3 because your mother says that's what you wanted to do, might just take a lifetime to work through, I'm not too surprised that he still has mixed feelings about it.
Another thing that struck me as odd was that I can't recall any of the people involved in the commentary noting that this film was made just after Gene Tierney's severally retarded daughter was born in 1943. Nor was much mention made that she'd been treated for depression for the first time around then, (in retrospect, didn't it occur to people that depression, and psychotropic meds might've affected her interactions with others?). Also, by both of their admissions later, she and her husband Oleg Cassini were both seeking solace for their problems with others. Um, don't you think this collection of "little" personal factors plus being in a big budget movie in which your appearance and acting was central, might have made the actress a tad "stand-offish" too??
Another thing that struck me as odd was that I can't recall any of the people involved in the commentary noting that this film was made just after Gene Tierney's severally retarded daughter was born in 1943. Nor was much mention made that she'd been treated for depression for the first time around then, (in retrospect, didn't it occur to people that depression, and psychotropic meds might've affected her interactions with others?). Also, by both of their admissions later, she and her husband Oleg Cassini were both seeking solace for their problems with others. Um, don't you think this collection of "little" personal factors plus being in a big budget movie in which your appearance and acting was central, might have made the actress a tad "stand-offish" too??