Money May Be the Root, but Lies Are a Fertilizer
Today's review: The Heiress.
I was drawn to The Heiress because all evidence pointed to it being a period piece. I was hoping for a lot of pretty costumes and social graces, perhaps with a nice romance thrown in. What I got instead was a movie that’s simultaneously interesting and one I’m left kind of uncertain about.
The heiress of the title is Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), a young woman in the 1840’s. Her father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson), continually compares her unfavorably to his late wife, thinking her plain, untalented, and not particularly intelligent. While Catherine cares for him too much to realize that he’s treating her badly, she is aware that most young men don’t seem to want to spend a lot of time with her at parties, and feels bad about that. Then, at one such party, she meets Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), who actually enjoys her company and makes her feel simultaneously flustered and happy. It doesn’t take long for him to propose marriage, but while Catherine happily accepts, her father very much doesn’t approve, convinced that Morris only wants her for her money. It’s all very predictable material, until it suddenly…isn’t. It’s kind of hard to discuss this movie without SPOILERS, so I’d suggest skipping the next two paragraphs if you’re interested in the movie but want to go in blind.
Most of the movie is pretty similar to the previously-reviewed The Barretts of Wimpole Street, with the overbearing, nasty father and the woman who starts to come into herself thanks to being in love. While I’m not fond of seeing a nice character get constantly browbeaten, the rest of the trope is something I can get behind. So you can imagine my surprise when the climax of the second act reveals that Morris is, in fact, a fortune hunter, leaving Catherine in the lurch and breaking her heart. But this isn’t a case where suddenly everything is reversed and the father is now portrayed as nicer; Dr. Sloper still treats Catherine cruelly, so much so that the scales fall from her eyes and she wants nothing more to do with him. It’s nuanced and morally grey, but it subverts expectations so totally that I was left discombobulated. Furthermore, the end result of all this is Catherine changing from a shy but well-meaning person to an independent but cold and cruel woman, which winds up feeling like she’s perpetuating a cycle. The ending definitely isn’t a happy one, and in fact ends somewhat abruptly, which just makes things even harder for me to parse. I feel like I should applaud the story for not just following the usual tropes, but at the same time, it’s so different that it feels unsatisfying. I feel like a movie has to strike the right balance between following the conventions and going against them, and I think The Heiress went too far in this particular case.
It doesn’t help that there’s a moment near the end that really muddies the waters for me. Throughout the movie, Catherine has spent a lot of her spare time doing embroidery. When Morris re-enters her life several years later, she’s in the process of finishing one up. He claims to still love her and just wanted to prove himself worthy of her, and asks her to elope with him that night. She agrees, sees him off, and then sits down to finish her embroidery. When told she doesn’t have time for that, she responds with “I must finish it now, for I will never do another.” She immediately follows this up with disgust that Morris would try the same tactics twice, and concludes her speech with “Well, he came to the wrong house, and he came twice. I shall see that he never comes a third time.” My immediate assumption, combining all that together, was that Catherine was going to kill herself and frame Morris for murdering her, punishing him while simultaneously no longer having to deal with all the emotional pain she’s gone through. The movie ends with Morris hammering on the locked door to her house, yelling her name, while she makes her way up the stairs with a grim look on her face, and we get no indication one way or another of how things are going to turn out. I feel like I read too much into things, but if that’s true, the script shouldn’t have included the “I will never do another embroidery” line if it wasn’t going to explain what Catherine meant by that. The abrupt ending is bad enough without throwing dark ambiguity on top of it.
SPOILERS OVER. The unexpected direction the story takes is the big talking point of the movie, but there are some other things worth noting. Most of the acting is fine, but not worth discussing. The two exceptions are Richardson, who does a great job at making you dislike Dr. Sloper’s treatment of Catherine, and Miriam Hopkins as Catherine’s relative Lavinia Penniman, who brings some increasingly much-needed kindness and levity to the story. While the movie is a period piece, there’s not much of a focus on pretty costumes, which was understandable if a bit of a disappointment. And finally, I made an observation that I feel may be me being uncharitable, but is probably worth talking about. For pretty much all of the movie, de Havilland is made up and lit in such a way that she doesn’t look particularly attractive. Since she’s supposed to be very plain, I assume this was on purpose, to really drive home the point that she’s not immediately going to appeal to young men. However, there are a few scenes where she looks pretty, and what I can’t figure out is if that’s supposed to represent her being happy and thus looking nicer because of how she carries herself, or if despite the best efforts of the crew, Havilland’s natural beauty was shining through. While I can appreciate the symbolism if the former is the case, it’s just ambiguous enough that it winds up being more of a distraction than anything. Combine that with the other elements, and it just adds to my uncertain feelings about this movie.
I don’t know if I recommend this movie or not. It might be worth checking out if you enjoy movies that subvert expectations, but people who were hoping for a nice little romantic drama run a good chance of being unpleasantly surprised. I will say this for it, though; if you watch it in a group, you’ll probably have a lot to talk about afterwards. And that can make something more worth exploring.
I was drawn to The Heiress because all evidence pointed to it being a period piece. I was hoping for a lot of pretty costumes and social graces, perhaps with a nice romance thrown in. What I got instead was a movie that’s simultaneously interesting and one I’m left kind of uncertain about.
The heiress of the title is Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), a young woman in the 1840’s. Her father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson), continually compares her unfavorably to his late wife, thinking her plain, untalented, and not particularly intelligent. While Catherine cares for him too much to realize that he’s treating her badly, she is aware that most young men don’t seem to want to spend a lot of time with her at parties, and feels bad about that. Then, at one such party, she meets Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), who actually enjoys her company and makes her feel simultaneously flustered and happy. It doesn’t take long for him to propose marriage, but while Catherine happily accepts, her father very much doesn’t approve, convinced that Morris only wants her for her money. It’s all very predictable material, until it suddenly…isn’t. It’s kind of hard to discuss this movie without SPOILERS, so I’d suggest skipping the next two paragraphs if you’re interested in the movie but want to go in blind.
Most of the movie is pretty similar to the previously-reviewed The Barretts of Wimpole Street, with the overbearing, nasty father and the woman who starts to come into herself thanks to being in love. While I’m not fond of seeing a nice character get constantly browbeaten, the rest of the trope is something I can get behind. So you can imagine my surprise when the climax of the second act reveals that Morris is, in fact, a fortune hunter, leaving Catherine in the lurch and breaking her heart. But this isn’t a case where suddenly everything is reversed and the father is now portrayed as nicer; Dr. Sloper still treats Catherine cruelly, so much so that the scales fall from her eyes and she wants nothing more to do with him. It’s nuanced and morally grey, but it subverts expectations so totally that I was left discombobulated. Furthermore, the end result of all this is Catherine changing from a shy but well-meaning person to an independent but cold and cruel woman, which winds up feeling like she’s perpetuating a cycle. The ending definitely isn’t a happy one, and in fact ends somewhat abruptly, which just makes things even harder for me to parse. I feel like I should applaud the story for not just following the usual tropes, but at the same time, it’s so different that it feels unsatisfying. I feel like a movie has to strike the right balance between following the conventions and going against them, and I think The Heiress went too far in this particular case.
It doesn’t help that there’s a moment near the end that really muddies the waters for me. Throughout the movie, Catherine has spent a lot of her spare time doing embroidery. When Morris re-enters her life several years later, she’s in the process of finishing one up. He claims to still love her and just wanted to prove himself worthy of her, and asks her to elope with him that night. She agrees, sees him off, and then sits down to finish her embroidery. When told she doesn’t have time for that, she responds with “I must finish it now, for I will never do another.” She immediately follows this up with disgust that Morris would try the same tactics twice, and concludes her speech with “Well, he came to the wrong house, and he came twice. I shall see that he never comes a third time.” My immediate assumption, combining all that together, was that Catherine was going to kill herself and frame Morris for murdering her, punishing him while simultaneously no longer having to deal with all the emotional pain she’s gone through. The movie ends with Morris hammering on the locked door to her house, yelling her name, while she makes her way up the stairs with a grim look on her face, and we get no indication one way or another of how things are going to turn out. I feel like I read too much into things, but if that’s true, the script shouldn’t have included the “I will never do another embroidery” line if it wasn’t going to explain what Catherine meant by that. The abrupt ending is bad enough without throwing dark ambiguity on top of it.
SPOILERS OVER. The unexpected direction the story takes is the big talking point of the movie, but there are some other things worth noting. Most of the acting is fine, but not worth discussing. The two exceptions are Richardson, who does a great job at making you dislike Dr. Sloper’s treatment of Catherine, and Miriam Hopkins as Catherine’s relative Lavinia Penniman, who brings some increasingly much-needed kindness and levity to the story. While the movie is a period piece, there’s not much of a focus on pretty costumes, which was understandable if a bit of a disappointment. And finally, I made an observation that I feel may be me being uncharitable, but is probably worth talking about. For pretty much all of the movie, de Havilland is made up and lit in such a way that she doesn’t look particularly attractive. Since she’s supposed to be very plain, I assume this was on purpose, to really drive home the point that she’s not immediately going to appeal to young men. However, there are a few scenes where she looks pretty, and what I can’t figure out is if that’s supposed to represent her being happy and thus looking nicer because of how she carries herself, or if despite the best efforts of the crew, Havilland’s natural beauty was shining through. While I can appreciate the symbolism if the former is the case, it’s just ambiguous enough that it winds up being more of a distraction than anything. Combine that with the other elements, and it just adds to my uncertain feelings about this movie.
I don’t know if I recommend this movie or not. It might be worth checking out if you enjoy movies that subvert expectations, but people who were hoping for a nice little romantic drama run a good chance of being unpleasantly surprised. I will say this for it, though; if you watch it in a group, you’ll probably have a lot to talk about afterwards. And that can make something more worth exploring.