Oft-befuddled critic Bosley Crowther called the film ‘a piece of cheap fiction done up in Technicolor and expensive sets,’ as if that isn’t what’s so awesome about it.

Full Review | Aug 19, 2024

This demented relationship drama by John M Stahl, starring the golden era actress Gene Tierney, is the original Fatal Attraction but better, deeper and darker.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 25, 2024

Part Technicolor film noir and part dark romantic melodrama with a psychotic beauty at its center, John Stahl’s gorgeous Leave Her to Heaven is the original Fatal Attraction as a lush melodrama in a picture-perfect world of affluence...

Full Review | Aug 5, 2022

Overlong In the telling and continuously melodramatic, Leave Her to Heaven is nevertheless a plausible version of the book.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Leave Her to Heaven is a well-done picture and rates as good screen entertainment.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

It's a bright, beautiful, shiny apple of a picture, all pith inside.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

The result is a tense and terrifying story.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Miss Tierney has the dramatic plum in Leave Her to Heaven and plays it earnestly. Her supporting cast, though, including [Cornel Wild, Jeanne Crain, Darryl Hickman, and Vincent Price], are equally artful.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

There is enough melodrama, and plot complications in the film to hold your interest.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Director Stahl has certainly made the most out of the book and done well directing the young players.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 29, 2021

There is no question that [Tierney] is in there trying every second to find the writhing emotional essence of the character. The quality is so elusive, or repugnant, however, that the effort is vain.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

I like a little mirth with my murders in films, but the mayheim in Leave Her to Heaven is so morbid that not even glorious technicolour can atone.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

It is a fine and absorbing movie, and it opened yesterday... just in time to establish a high place for itself in the rank of the romantic, emotional films of 1945.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Miss Tierney enacts this sordid virulent role in a manner that will prove strangely arresting for those who look on. It is even the kind of interpretation that may win the Academy award.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Two hours of Leave Her To Heaven are like a month of virus catarrh.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

The movie version of Ben Ames Williams' novel follows the book closely and should satisfy the thousands who read it avidly.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Gene Tierney, as the jealous wife, whose possessive love for her husband drives her to extremes, including murder and self-destruction, is a most unsympathetic character, but her portrayal is outstanding.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

[Ellen] is a fascinating figure, even with all her repellant attributes, as played by Gene Tierney, who bites deep into the role, and turns in the most deeply emotional characterization with which she has been identified to date.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

Here is a beautifully made attraction with an engrossing story, fine performances and top-level production values from go to finish.

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021

The film's strongest impression remains the rainbow variety of those glorious Technicolor interiors, those gorgeous clothes, and those spellbinding homes... The romantic will adore it, perhaps; but why handle a monster-melodrama like a musical?

Full Review | Sep 29, 2021