Leave Her To Heaven (1945) - John M. Stahl

A genre film masquerading as a melodrama or is it a melodrama dipping its toes into genre, I'm not really sure, but John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven is a fascinating and ambitious film in its general intentions, profiling a character who carries an understated emotional fragility, one which drives her to commit atrocious acts as she conflates the selfless nature of love with pervasive possessiveness. Gene Tierney gives such a balanced and nuanced performance, which largely through subtext brings a humanizing presence to a character that could easily be simply perceived as diabolical. The fragility she bestows despite her actions speaks subtextual to past trauma that has driven her to conceptualize love in such a destructive manner, one rooted in possession and control, not love - the fear of losing this attachment leads her to abject violence.  Features some beautifully constructed sequences of tension and violence which play into this woman's cursed conceptualization of love. I'm still hard-pressed to call this woman sympathetic, given the extremity of her actions and yet the film leaves the viewer in a perpetual state of frustration about this wild narrative, one which first-and-foremost is rooted in excavating the overwhelming sadness of this story while showcasing how the past and present are far from disparate forces - one's past transgressions being intrinsically formative towards their present experience​