The Heiress (UR, 1949)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Dull and plain Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) lives with her emotionally distant father, Dr. Sloper (Ralph Richardson), in 1840s New York. Her days are empty — filled with little more than needlepoint. Enter handsome Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), a dashing social climber with his eye on the spinster’s heart and substantial inheritance. William Wyler’s Academy Award-winning film is an adaptation of the Henry James novel Washington Square.
REVIEW: I’d heard much about this movie, how it’s a masterwork of classic cinema and this and that, so I’d saved it to my Q months ago. When I noticed it go to my “available now” section of the Q, I immediately moved it to the top before it was inexplicably moved back down to the saved section. My impression was that this wasn’t quite the masterwork it was touted to be, but it was a good, solid, linear story.
The performance by Ralph Richardson, the father, is the most nuanced
and had the most depth in my opinion - odd because Olivia de Havilland’s character is the one whose personality and character does a complete 180 while Dr. Sloper’s never really changes. Dr. Sloper plays the protective if not aloof father who wishes Catherine could be more like her deceased mother and M. Clift plays the one-note fortunehunter who wishes to seduce Catherine because she stands to gain a large inheritance upon her father’s death.
In my mind, Olivia de Havilland will always be Melanie Hamilton, her
immortal soft-spoken, good-natured, noble Gone with the Wind character. To have me see her as the shy, reserved, naive and socially awkward Catherine who gets swept up by the handsome and worldly Morris Townsend wasn’t a leap, but she wasn’t as convincing when she shifts to the hardened, steely, determined post-jilted Catherine. In fact, one of my main problems was that I felt sympathy for her father whom I felt was only trying to protect her from Morris, in the way he knew how, as opposed to feeling sympathy for Catherine who never seems to be quite good enough to satisfy her father’s expectations. The scene where he threatens to cut her out of the will and where Catherine forces his hand to sign the will
cutting her out but where Dr. Sloper finally can’t do it only added to my empathy for his situation.
Still, the storyline was interesting and the movie is executed very well for a straight-up linear plotline and is worth a rental. It’s also good to check out Montgomery Clift - this was my first time seeing him on screen and he is very nice eye candy. 
If you want to see some hardened, steely determined women of the classics though, I would highly recommend All About Eve for the creme de la creme of strong women characters.
4 stars
Audrey
