Die Erbin

Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) is a thoroughly ordinary girl with one thing commend her—her money. That's the view of her father (Ralph Richardson), who believes he is cruel only to be kind. He takes a dim view of the handsome and charming man (Montgomery Clift) who courts her. Surely this idler's only possible motive for proposing marriage is to get her money. Catherine's aunt (Miriam Hopkins) may agree, but believes the two should marry anyway. Catherine is deeply in love, but her fiancé will forever change her view of herself, of her father and of human nature as a whole.

William Wyler directs Augustus and Ruth Goetz's adaptation of their own play, suggested by Henry James's "Washington Square," and it's a fine job by all. We rarely see such a subtle and precise view of people, presented in a way that allows us to draw our own conclusions about them. Is the father villainous and cruel? Is the fiancé a fortune hunter? Do we approve or disapprove of Catherine's decisions throughout the film? We're not told what to think.

De Havilland is fine at conveying the various shades of her many-faceted character. Richardson is excellent, making the most of his mellifluous voice and superb manners. Clift is good, though his diction is lazier than that of his co-stars'. I find Clift smug and unappealing, which doesn't detract from this particular character. Miriam Hopkins, a former leading lady, aged into character parts, gives a performance rich in detail and humor. Highly recommended.

Certainly among the finest literary adaptations, "The Heiress" was based on Henry James's novel, "Washington Square" and features arguably Olivia de Havilland's finest screen performance. Morris Townsend , a handsome young man with ambiguous motives pursues Catherine Sloper, a plain spinster, who is slightly past marriageable age and possesses limited social skills. The young woman, who is the heiress of the title, is vulnerable prey for a penniless fortune hunter.

However, Montgomery Clift plays Townsend in an enigmatic manner, and viewers can debate his true intentions. Catherine's father, played by Ralph Richardson, and her Aunt Lavinia, played by Miriam Hopkins, take opposite sides in Townsend's pursuit of Catherine. Although both her father and her aunt appear to see through the handsome suitor, Aunt Lavinia is practical and sensitive to her niece's emotional needs, and she counsels compromise in pursuit of happiness, if only fleeting. However, Catherine's father is unyielding and essentially unloving in his opposition to the match. Throughout, Dr. Sloper compares his daughter's virtues to those of his late wife, and Catherine comes up lacking in every quality that he values. Sloper threatens to disinherit his daughter if she marries the suitor.

Montgomery Clift may appear shallow and transparent to some, but in essence those are the traits of his character. While Morris is slick and obviously fawning, he is not intelligent enough to be totally deceptive. Only someone as naive and needy as Olivia could fail to grasp that Morris may want something more than her love. Olivia de Havilland transcends her other performances and skillfully and convincingly evolves from a shy, introverted girl into a strong, vengeful woman. De Havilland has often portrayed women who appear genteel and soft on the outside, but whose hearts and backbones can harden into pure steel (e.g. Gone with the Wind; Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte), and Catherine Sloper is the finest of those roles. With able support from Richardson and Hopkins, Clift and de Havilland make the most of an outstanding screenplay, which was adapted from a stage play. William Wyler directs with a sure hand, and the atmospheric cinematography captures 19th century New York life. Period films are often unraveled by their hairstyles, which generally owe more to the year in which the film was made rather than that in which the story is set. However, even the coiffures excel in "The Heiress." De Havilland's hair looks authentic 19th century and underscores Wyler's fastidious attention to detail.

With an award-winning de Havilland performance, a handsome Montgomery Clift on the brink of stardom, and an engrossing Henry James story, "The Heiress" is one of the finest films of the 1940's. Without qualification, the film holds up to and merits repeat viewings if only to better argue the underlying motives of Clift and the fateful decision that de Havilland has to make.

The Heiress (1949)

Another gem from William Wyler. This is the director of so many sparkling, flawless interpersonal dramas it's hard to believe he isn't lionized alongside more famous greats. The problem (as he admits in interviews) is he had no real style of his own. And yet, as the years go by, his "style" begins to clarify a little. Watch "The Little Foxes" or "Detective Story" or this one, "The Heiress," and you'll see an astonishing, complex handling of a small group of people with visual clarity and emotional finesse.

There is no overacting here, and no photographic flourishes to make you gasp. There are no murky shadows or gunfights or even ranting and raving. No excess. What you have here is terrific writing (thanks in part to Henry James who wrote the source story, Washington Square) and terrific acting.

The three leads are all first rate actors, surely. Montgomery Clift a young and rising star, Olivia de Havilland already famous for earlier roles (including a supporting one in "Gone with the Wind"), and the terrific stage actor Ralph Richardson, who received an Oscar nomination for his role. It is de Haviland who is the heiress of the title, and she does tend to steal the show with a performance that you would think would tip into campy excess but which just veers this side of danger and makes you feel for her scene after scene. And she took the Best Actress award for it.

A good director manages to bring the best from the actors, which Wyler clearly does. But he also finds ways to make those performances jump out of the film reality into the movie theater. His fluid, expert way of moving actors around one another, of having them trade positions or look this way or that as they deliver some intensely subtle comeback line, is really astonishing. And easy to miss, I think, if you just get absorbed in the plot. So watch it all.

The story itself is pretty chilling and oddly dramatic (dramatic for Henry James, not for Wyler, who likes a kind of soap opera drama within all his focused restraint). The heiress (de Havilland) is being pursued by a fortune hunting and rather handsome man (Clift) and she doesn't realize his love isn't for real. But the father, with his slightly cruel superiority, sees it all and tries to subtly maneuver his daughter to safety. The result is a lot of heartbreak and surprising twists of motivation.

By the end almost anything can happen, within this upper class world of manners and appropriate reactions, and de Havilland rises to the challenge. It's worth seeing how. Terrific stuff from the golden age of the silver screen, for sure.

One of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books. Henry James sitting in the audience would have been proud of this insightful filming of his novel, "Washington Square," because the film retains so much of the subtlety of his own writing. Usually, Hollywood eliminates any of the subtlety of a great author's voice (see the recent remake of "Washington Square" if you want to see a real Hollywoodization of a novel – it actually depicts a young Catherine peeing her pants in public – an inane "Animal House"-type Hollywood requirement that degrading a woman by showing her peeing is an erotic boost for any movie). But "The Heiress" is pure James. Olivia de Havilland is perfect as James' unlikely heroine, going from an awkward gawky girl eager to please her beloved father, to a simple, loving young woman who steadfastly stands by her lover, to an embittered middle-aged woman who understands that, as Henry James says, "the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring."

If you liked this movie, read the novel. Listen to James' descriptions of Catherine and her father and see if this isn't exactly what Ralph Richardson and Olivia deHavilland portrayed:

"Doctor Sloper would have liked to be proud of his daughter; but there was nothing to be proud of in poor Catherine."

"Love demands certain things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favors."

" 'She is so soft, so simple-minded, she would be such an easy victim! A bad husband would have remarkable facilities for making her miserable; for she would have neither the intelligence nor the resolution to get the better of him.' "

"She was conscious of no aptitude for organized resentment."

"In reality, she was the softest creature in the world."

"She had been so humble in her youth that she could now afford to have a little pride . . . Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far."

Clifton Fadiman, in his introduction to "Washington Square," says that the novel's moral is: "to be right is not enough. Dr. Sloper is 'right'; he is right about the character of Townsend, he is right about his own character, he is right about the character of Catherine. But because he can offer only the insufficient truth of irony where the sufficient truth of love is required, he partly ruins his daughter's life, and lives out his own in spiritual poverty."

Dr. Sloper's contemptuous "rightness," penetrating and accurate as it is, is no substitute for the kindness and love his adoring daughter craves from him. In "The Rainmaker," a great Katharine Hepburn movie, also about a plain woman seeking love, only this time with a loving father, the character of Hepburn's father sums up this moral that "to be right is not enough" when he says to his self-righteous son: "Noah, you're so full of what's right that you can't see what's good!"

What a lavish history of films we are fortunate enough to have in this country. And I count "The Heiress" as one of the best. Combine a wonderfully told story with a masterful director (William Wyler), and add to that superb cast, and you have the formula for a masterpiece as we do here.

Olivia de Havilland gives the performance of her life as Catherine Sloper, the socially awkward and homely daughter of surgeon Dr. Sloper (played by Ralph Richardson). She brings such a strong performance as her character evolves from a timid, shy and innocent young lady to a hardened, disappointed and bitter woman. I don't know that I have ever seen an actress give such a convincing evolution, before or since. She truly earned her Oscar win for Best Actress. Richardson also delivers a believable performance as the ruthless father that is extremely disappointed in his daughter, and never fails to let her know it. At the same time, there is a hint of fatherly love below the surface trying to protect his daughter from what he perceives is a fortune hunter in the suitor of Montgomery Clift's character, Morris Townsend.

The photography in the film is amazing as it conveys the deep emotions in the film so adequately. You feel Catherine's loneliness and awkwardness, and the scenes involving the elopement, and later the final rejection, are quite hauntingly portrayed.

One of my favorite lines in movies is from this film when Catherine's Aunt tells her "Can you be so cruel?" to which Catherine coldly replies "Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters." This is a film you will want to see multiple times to uncover all the layers and details of the very deep and tragic story of "The Heiress".