Released in 1945 to great success, Leave Her to Heaven was directed by John M. Stahl, renowned for “women’s pictures” such as Back Street (1932), Imitation of Life (1934), and Magnificent Obsession (1935), and for those films’ implicit critique of the confining gender mores ensnaring his heroines. Here, he offers us one of the most perverse and remorseless femmes fatales in film history. Driven not by the material, even relatable motivations of most of film noir’s lethal women—money, security, escape—Ellen’s “sickness” is more cryptic and upsetting. She does what she does not for a pot of gold, or freedom, but for an impulse more subterranean: a desire to replicate her consuming love for her father. At the same time, however, the movie gives us other clues that may explain Ellen’s “problem.” Foremost, we see her surrender her bachelor-style freedom (possible as her father’s ally and confidante) to take on the more traditional role of devoted wife, only to bristle and struggle under what the movie portrays as the claustrophobic demands of family and motherhood. Ultimately, Leave Her to Heaven demonstrates the impossibility of someone like Ellen—a transgressor, an outsider, a figure of “male” agency—ever meeting the era’s strict standards of femininity. And so Ellen becomes not just the most dangerous of cinema’s femmes fatales but also, ironically, one of the most defiantly sympathetic. Thanks to Stahl’s nuanced direction, as well as Jo Swerling’s script (adapted from Ben Ames Williams’s novel) and Tierney’s tense and relentless performance, we find ourselves, in sneaking moments and in subtextual ways, understanding Ellen’s frustrations as she fails, over and over again, in her attempts to conform and, more intimately, to attain love. We may even find ourselves quietly admiring Ellen, or at least retaining some awe of her, as she rejects and overturns the social expectations that have stifled and nearly crushed her.

The first clue to Leave Her to Heaven’s subversive, sympathetic view of Ellen lies in its narrative frame (taken from the novel): the movie begins with Richard returning from prison and into the care of his friend and attorney, Glen Robie (Ray Collins), also the lawyer for the Berent family. The rest of the movie then unfolds in flashback, as Robie narrates the tragic tale of Richard and Ellen’s doomed romance. He claims he is the “only one who knows the whole story,” though Stahl and Swerling ensure that we understand from the start that Robie’s allegiances are with Richard, and any insight into Ellen will have to be gained through the story’s seams. Men rule the narrative, men make the rules. But Ellen will not follow rules.

From the start, Ellen’s “problem” is diagnosed by her loved ones as an overattachment to her father. “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen,” Ellen’s mother (Mary Philips) tells Richard. “It’s just that she loves too much . . . She loved her father too much.” But that excessiveness is echoed in other ways. Both her mother and her adoptive sister, Ruth (Jeanne Crain), can barely conceal their fear and discomfort with Ellen and are eager to cast suspicion on her. Of particular focus is Ellen’s competitiveness and her independence. When she disappears for a long stretch, early in their budding romance, Richard expresses concern, and Mrs. Berent assures him icily, “Nothing ever happens to Ellen.” When she embarks on a swimming competition with Glen’s children, Richard genially roots the young ones on before Glen observes, with a fatalistic air, “Ellen always wins.” These pronouncements from those closest to Ellen are meant to serve as chilly warnings from warm, wholesome people, yet they can also be read as emblematic of the hostile, passive-aggressive environment in which Ellen resides before her marriage to Richard promises rescue, escape.

Ellen’s competitive nature and her agency are explicitly coded as traditionally male: she rides horses (with great fervor and confidence); she hunts and eats her prey; she wins all contests, dominates discussion, and makes all her own decisions. The movie’s opening credits show a dust-jacket illustration of a young woman in pants, chin raised, arms extended above her head. A power pose. It is Ellen who proposes marriage to the passive Richard. It is Ellen who makes the first move, kissing him passionately, voraciously. In ways that make everyone uncomfortable, even troubled, she is the “man of the house.” Ellen makes things happen for herself, and all this in a historical moment, at the end of the Second World War, when the cultural imperative for women to return to traditional roles as passive homemakers, supportive wives and mothers, felt urgent and necessary.

These are precisely the roles Ellen attempts to take on after her marriage to Richard. Immediately, she turns her peerless drive to the task of becoming the perfect homemaker, preparing elaborate meals and abandoning her riding breeches for gingham and soft curls. But it’s not so simple for Ellen as putting on an apron. While she wants to embody these roles to some extent, she also continues to make her own rules. Her aim is not a big family, a buzzing household. She wants a world of two: Richard and her. “I don’t want anybody else but me to do anything for you,” she tells him.