The first film noir in Technicolor is a hard, cold forerunner to the tale of woman's bitterness in Beyond the Forest. At release in 1945, the New York Times' Bosley Crowther grumpily called John Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven "a moody, morbid film which is all about a selfish, jealous and deceitful dame." Part of the film's true pleasure comes from its innovative stylistic contradictions: not only Leon Shamroy's Oscar-winning noir in color but the plotline's dark doings in bright landscapes (spectacular Arizona deserts and California Sierras). Gene Tierney is perfectly cast as the archetypal deadpan noir bitch, who "loves" her husband so exclusively that it's natural enough for her to murder intrusions like his crippled brother. Still, the film's title asks us to suspend judgment. Like Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest, her overdetermined Freudian derangement-in contrast to the rationality of the sweet men-makes her an object of some sympathy. Where Vidor and Davis are wild and excessive, Stahl and Tierney are eerily unemotional and hard-edged. Scott Simmon