La heredera

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.

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.

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!"

Henry James novel of spinster daughter of wealthy doctor being wooed by a fortune hunter is meticulously brought to the screen by Wyler and a stellar cast. The beautiful de Havilland, made to look plain and dull, is quite good in her Oscar-winning title role. Also fine are Clift as the gold digger and Hopkins as de Havilland's understanding aunt. However, the best performance is given by Richardson as the cold, domineering father who wants to protect his daughter but also despises her meek existence. Brown, who plays the maid, looks like a young Grace Kelly. The cinematography is excellent and there's a fine score by Copland.

The Heiress has to be one of the greatest movies ever made. There is nothing about it that I would change. The cast is perfect. Montgomery Clift is so wonderful as Morris Townsend. His physical beauty makes it easy to understand how someone as gauche as Catherine Sloper could overcome her shyness and respond to him. Olivia de Havilland is almost too good looking to be the unattractive Miss Sloper, however her great acting overcomes her beauty, and the viewer readily accepts her in the part. Ralph Richardson is perfect as Dr. Sloper. With his disdain for his daughter and his idealization of her dead mother, it is easy to see how his attitude has frozen his daughter in her insecurity about everything that she does. Miriam Hopkins is the perfect airhead social climber who does have affection for her niece, but becomes so wrapped up in the overall romance of the situation that she doesn't act in the best interests of her niece but in the best interests of the romantic drama that is unfolding around her. In her biography, Edith Head talks about researching and designing the clothes for this movie. Certainly the costumes greatly enhance Olivia de Havilland's ability to play this part and be accepted as the plain and graceless Catherine Sloper. A great movie that shouldn't be missed.