The Heiress

Film Name: The Heiress

Director: William Wyler

Year: 1949

Novel: Washington Square by Henry James

Photography: Leo Tover

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“How can you be so cruel?” asks her aunt. “I have been taught by masters,” comes the icy reply. William’s Wyler unforgettable adaptation of Henry James’s novel Washington Square (pointlessly remade in 1997) revolves around indelible performances, intensified by the director’s trademark demanding long takes and meticulous mastery of mood, lighting, and camera technique. Olivia de Havilland, who received her second Academy Award for her performance, is heart-stopping as the dreadfully plain, painfully gauche girl marked as a spinster despite the fortune she will inherit from the cold, caustic father (Ralph Richardson), who regards her as an embarrassment.

Then beautiful, fortune-hunting wastrel Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) courts her, as insincere as he is irresistible. Over the insulting objections of her father and with the connivance of her foolishly romantic aunt (Miriam Hopkins), Catherine plots an elopement; when her lover decides to take his chances elsewhere, she undergoes a steely transformation. After the naive Catherine realizes that she has been jilted, de Havilland’s slow, exhausted ascent up the stairs is forever haunting.

Her final ascent upstairs, in better triumph as her returned suitor pounds desperately at the door, is no less affecting. The class of the entire production is undefined by Aaron Copland’s evocative original score, also an Oscar winner.” (AE)

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