Leave Her to Heaven: Perfect Perception, Fatal Desire, Control and Punishment.

A video essay on Leave Her to Heaven a Technicolor noir that uses beauty, obsession, and gendered morality to expose mid-century anxieties about female autonomy.

Narrated by ‪@samchapmanmakeup‬

Nina Mae Fowler: https://ninamaefowler.art (artist mention).

This video includes brief clips from Leave Her to Heaven (1945) used under Fair Use for purposes of criticism, commentary, and analysis. All rights belong to their respective copyright holders.

Bibliography

Stahl, J.M. (dir.) 1945, Leave Her to Heaven [film], 20th Century Fox, USA.

Shakespeare, W. 2016, Hamlet, rev. edn, ed. A. Thompson & N. Taylor, The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, London.

American Psychiatric Association 2013, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5, 5th edn, American Psychiatric Publishing, Washington, DC.

Freud, S. 1914, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, in J. Strachey (ed. & trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14, Hogarth Press, London, pp. 67–102.

Doane, M.A. 1987, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Doane, M.A. 1991, Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, Routledge, New York.

Salzberg, A. 2010, Beyond the Looking Glass: The Narcissistic Woman Reflected and Embodied in Classic Hollywood Film, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh. (Chapter III: ‘“What are you running away from? Is it me?”: Vanishing Differences in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Leave Her to Heaven (1945)).

Doane, M.A. 1987, ‘The woman’s film: Possession and address’, in The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 1–30.

Smith, I.S. 2014, In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City, McFarland, Jefferson, NC. (Discusses Leave Her to Heaven as Technicolor noir and Ellen as an atypical femme fatale.)

Levy, E. 2011, ‘Leave Her to Heaven: Cult Movie–Noir in Red Color’, Emanuel Levy: Cinema 24/7, 2 June, viewed [today’s date], .

Vogel, M. 2011, Gene Tierney: A Biography, McFarland, Jefferson, NC.

Walker, M. 2018, The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.