Heiress, The (1949)
Director: William Wyler
Honors:
Academy Award for Best Costume Design
Riding a critical crest within a very successful acting
career Olivia de Havilland was a major player in one of 1949’s most celebrated cinematic
dramas which help to provide herself a vehicle that earned a second Academy
Award. With a story layered with societal pressure, romantic naiveté, and
heartache The Heiress is a well-executed period piece that is timeless
with its delivery about painful relationships. Interestingly the film is a
meeting point of acting styles with classic Hollywood thespianism and a
traditional stage performance as it meets with the newly developing method
acting seen within its three star actors. Upon viewing it is simple to see the
picture as one of the superlative acclaimed films of the year.
The Heiress is a drama about a young, naïve woman
that finds herself prey to a handsome fortune hunter and the father that hopes
to protect her. Set in mid 19th century New York, Catherine Sloper
(Olivia de Havilland), the painfully shy and rather plain sole daughter of a well-respected
physician (Ralph Richardson), who urges her to socialize with hopes that she
might find herself a proper suitor. Catherine meets and falls in love with the
handsome, young Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), who after a rather brief
courtship proposes to her. However, Dr. Sloper believes Morris’ intentions are
to marry as means to assume Catherine’s future inherited wealth upon his
passing, leaving Dr. Sloper to refuse a blessing of the lovebirds, upsetting
Catherine. With plans to disinherit herself from her father so that she may
elope to prove her father wrong Catherine finds herself abandoned by Morris when
he learns she will lose her wealth and family in the process, deeply breaking
her heart.
Hurt both by her father and her supposed lover, Catherine
grows cold and callous, even refusing feel pain at the time of her father’s eventual
passing. Shortly thereafter Morris re-emerges explaining how he left her to
avoid creating a rift between father and daughter and now with Dr. Sloper gone,
and Catherine in full control of the family inheritance, the two can pick up
where they left off. However, Catherine turns the tables leaving Morris to believe
they will go through with the marriage, but this time leaving him devastated as
she closes him out of her life after giving him a glimmer of hope to claiming
what he wanted.
The picture does a first-rate job at sharing the tale of a socially
shy individuals that broken by two deeply meaningful relationships. First is
that of a protective paternal love that must hurt her despite all its good
intentions and the other a deep romance that revels itself as a false front for
an individual looking to pry on the naïve. Ultimately, it’s a tale about how an insecure
woman who learns to take control of the ugly world around her. The William
Wyler period picture consists of a peculiar mix of actors manipulated well
enough to present a solid ensemble of three main characters that get to the
root of psychological control and painful emotion. With superior art direction
and costume design the period piece is wonderfully manifested without getting
in the way of the plot, proving a perfect balance of presentation and story.
Frankly this feature makes for one of these classic Hollywood films that many,
including me, do not hear much about, but is a solid picture that holds up all
these years later.
The Heiress was a project suggested by Olivia de
Havilland to director William Wyler after taking in a performance of the play
on Broadway who would take his filmmaking pull to the heads of Paramount and
pitched as an idea. De Havilland saw the story of the troubled female character
as excellent vehicle for herself while riding a wave of consecutive critically
acclaimed performances and Wyler the perfect director to motivate her in such a
feature. After a $250,000 purchase of the movie rights the authors were hired
to rework the script, tweaking character aspects to the benefit of the star
cast for the film adaption.
Of coarse Olivia de Havilland was cast as the troubled
female lead, Catherine, while Ralph Richardson was brought about to reprise the
role of Dr. Sloper from his successful portrayal from the play on London’s West
End. Ideas of Cary Grant being cats as Morris Townsend would eventually give
way the rising performer Montgomery Clift. Figuring Clift’s appeal as a
sensitive romantic lead with his youthful, easy going manner and charismatic
delivery the studio had the role of Morris reworked slightly to be portrayed as
less of a villain and more attractively romantic to play to Clift’s
attractiveness. Catherine was made to appear colder as the character, more
jaded by the emotional pain from her father’s words and her romantic scars.
The mix of these three main actors in the picture delivers
three contrasting acting styles that director William Wyler was able to
expertly weave together to the benefit of the feature. Richardson is perhaps
the easiest to understand in his performance. With his formal British stage
acting presence he is proper patriarchal figure that expects dignity in the
actions of himself, his daughter, and whomever her suitor may be, delivering us
a performance of a hard-love figurehead. To portray his sister and Catherine’s
loving aunt, is Miriam Hopkins returning from a six year hiatus from the movies
portraying a maternal figure that plays the emotional opposite to Richardson’s Dr.
Sloper. A wonderful and lovable character Hopkin’s role as the mature female
model for Catherine serves a third person that wants what is perceived best for
her, but is swayed by romance over reason, which creates the conflict between
the two characters.
De Havilland was always a unique actress that found
different means to motivate her best performances. Here she recruited director
William Wyler and creatively giving into whatever he saw fit for her role. De
Havilland’s performance is of the older school of Hollywood acting, utilizing a
mix of instruction with allowing the script to guide her actions. At times her
performance is a bit of shallow depth as she never seems quite sure what to do,
but that was only in following the direction of Wyler. De Havilland’s
performance evolves through the picture using her eyes, expressions, and body
language to appear more weighted down as the plot unfolds. William Wyler guided
her performance by manipulating his star actress with creative means to drive
her delivery. Perhaps the best example of how Wyler guided de Havilland’s
performance is in an emotion peak in the feature making de Havilland carry a
weighted down suitcase in the scene where she is stood up by Morris. The weight
of the pop added to the exhausted performance of the young girl with a broken
heart, manifesting just how the director manipulates his star to get the best
out of her.
Clift was a actor of a completely different style of
[performance that in a clashed with his established cast. As an actor of the
newly emerging school of method acting, Clift found working with de Havilland
and her style of performance difficult as he dove into his role by embodying
the character, while de Havilland merely attempting to recreate that which her
director instructed her. Clift motivated by reacting to his co-star’s
performance found his romantic co-lead’s style to lack sincerity, leaving him sensing
he had little to reciprocate off of.
Despite de Havilland delivering one of the year’s best performances
Montgomery Clift found the experience of working on the feature troubling.
Aside from finding difficulty to mesh his acting style with de Havilland, he
found no help in Wyler’s direction. Clift believed in becoming his character
rather than just taking direction on set, going so far as to taking piano
lessons to make his one scene playing a tune for Catherine more effortless and believable. The Heiress as a production did little
to inspire the actor, but his performance still delivers the effortless,
youthful appeal of an intelligent love interest wanted from the role of Morris.
On screen his delivery is very pleasant and gels well for the character and the
picture. However, for Clift he found his performance so unappealing and
unrealistic that he would leave the premier of the feature at Radio City Music
Hall mid picture.
The Heiress would open to near universal critical
praise, but lack box office drawing power even as a well-produced period piece.
The feature was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning four, the most
notable being Olivia de Havilland’s second Oscar for Best Actress along with
winning the same award at the Golden Globes and the New York Film Circle.
Despite the box office failure the picture was, the artistry
and superior production quality made the feature one fo the finest of the year
and the era. It may not be as well remembered as the other bigger named
features of the late 1940s, The Heiress earns a great deal of respect
from the film community. Several tributes and considerations as among the best
all-time American features, including a 1996 election to the National Film
Registry, manifest how well received the picture is in the annals of cinema
history. Sadly, the film remains lesser known, but it is worth a good viewing
as the picture is very well made and captures some very fine performances creative
differences. The Heiress is amazing considering how much praise it
received then and even years later, but appears to have been buried in the
history of cinema.
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