Leave Her to Heaven: John M. Stahl

Why is John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven considered a film noir? And no, I'm not just saying that because the film is shot in Technicolor instead of black-and-white. This film is more of a melodramatic thriller about a mentally unbalanced woman who marries a famous writer and kills off anybody who might steal his attention away from her. That's not to say that Leave Her to Heaven is a bad film. Gene Tierney gives a career-defining performance as the murderous Ellen Berent. For the first third of the film we don't even suspect that she is capable of cold-blooded murder. But then she allows her husband's disabled brother to drown while under her care. Next she forces herself to miscarry by "tripping" down a flight of stairs when she feels that he isn't paying enough attention to her. And finally she frames her adoptive sister Ruth for murder when she feels that she has become too chummy with her husband. Whose murder? Well, I won't spoil that for you. But despite the film's quality, I can't think of it as a film noir. According to David Hogan, the four big influences on film noir were: 1) post-World War II anxiety, 2) low budgets, 3) "hard-boiled" crime literature, and 4) the influence of German filmmakers and their predilection towards "expressionism, fatalism, and psychological melodrama. First off, the film makes no mention of World War II. Second, Technicolor cinematography and on-location shooting all over the United States isn't cheap. Third, while the film is based on a novel, its writer, Ben Ames Williams, can hardly be described as "hard-boiled." And fourth, while the film is definitely preoccupied with psychological melodrama, it can hardly be described as "expressionist" or "fatalistic." This is just a very, very pretty melodrama. Nothing more.

7/10