The Heiress Reviews

The Heiress is a prime example of the kind of literary adaptations that Hollywood once trafficked in. Films that fashioned intelligent frameworks from great novels allowing for a kind of cinematic poetry between the finely honed performances and staid melodrama, a type of cinematic language that no longer exists. The Heiress is a slow-burning character study, following one woman’s transition from anxious, sweet spinster into a harder persona allowing star Olivia de Havilland to give the greatest performance of her storied career.

The Heiress’ story is simple, Catherine Sloper (de Havilland) lives with her widower father (Ralph Richardson) and aunt (Miriam Hopkins), forever begging her father to love her while accepting his repeated emotional abuse and rejection. One night at a society dance, Catherine meets a young suitor (Montgomery Clift) who sweeps her away with promises of eternal love, devotion, and companionship. This lovesick girl ignores all of the warning signs, arguing with her father about the suitor’s questionable intentions in so brisk a courtship.

All of this drama comes to a head midway through when Catherine receives one last heartbreak that finally cracks her defenseless, sensitive exterior. She jettisons all her prior naiveté and optimism for a steely eyed, slightly bitter person. The flashes of insecurity and deep-rooted resentment in the earliest parts of the film coming roaring to the surface, with Catherine finally striking back at both her absentee father and gold-digging suitor, culminating in a final image of immense cruelty and pleasurable revenge. Director William Wyler deploys these changes of character and cycles of abuse in slow drips, slowly ratcheting up the tension, cloistering so many of the unsaid emotions so that when they’re finally laid bare they hit harder and leave blistering marks on the characters psyches.

The greatest strength of The Heiress is the central performances from the four leads, even more so than the immaculate production values, wonderful score, intelligent script, and solid direction. Ralph Richardson is oily charm as the father. His emotional intelligence and erudite manner masks, only barely, the near complete contempt he feels towards his daughter and her inability to live up to the image he’s built up of his dead wife. By this point, Miriam Hopkins was a reliable supporting player, and she’s the lone character to give Catherine any love or affection from a genuine emotional place. Montgomery Clift was at the height of his romantic leading man looks here, the perfect embodiment of a Gothic romance’s tortured hunk. He’s achingly beautiful here, and blessed with eyes that can sell you a lie straight to your face, an essential trick in making the role work.

But this is Olivia de Havilland’s tour de force performance, and she plays it all like a woman possessed. She was always at her best when her lovely exterior, blushing complexion, large doe eyes, and innate sweetness, are utilized to subvert the emotional undercurrents of her character. This trick was used to effectively portray slowly crumbling sanity (The Snake Pit), a subterranean intelligence and iron core (Gone With the Wind), and a stone cold murderess (Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte), but none of those quite prepare you for the depth she brings to this role. She captures a dark, murky depth beneath the good-girl piety and yearning for love and validation. It’s the eyes that have it, which reveal every crushing blow to her ego and psyche and the eventual poison she spits back out. Olivia de Havilland must carry a complicated load, alternating between crying for affection, a deep-rooted anger, a painful shyness, and craving for revenge, sometimes all at once, sometimes in pieces, and she makes it all look so graceful.

All of these attributes have the markings of making The Heiress a classic, of which it is, but it’s the strength of the narrative, a complicated portrait of one woman coming into her power and shaking off the shackles of social propriety, that elevate it to that level. Not only do they elevate it, but they keep it there. This blossoming of the grittier aspects of her personality play like a hard won battle, finally removing the lack of social graces and fidgeting hands, the eager to please and placating nature like outgrown garments. The scene where Catherine’s father tells her she lacks beauty, charm, and wit is a crushing blow, because it’s so clear that she never stood a chance of blooming when her father ensured her wilting.

“Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters.” Indeed.