The Heiress (1949)

User Rating:

8.2/10   

Director:

William Wyler

Writers:

Augustus Goetz (play)
Augustus Goetz (screenplay)

Release Date:

6 October 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

When a Woman Loves a Man . . . She Doesn't Want to Know the Truth About Him !

Plot:

A young naive woman falls for a handsome young man who her emotionally abusive father suspects is a fortune hunter.

Plot Keywords:

Money | Fortune | Fortune Hunter | Inheritance | 1840s

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 4 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Olivia de Havilland	...	Catherine Sloper
Montgomery Clift	...	Morris Townsend
Ralph Richardson	...	Dr. Austin Sloper
Miriam Hopkins	...	Lavinia Penniman
Vanessa Brown	...	Maria
Betty Linley	...	Mrs. Montgomery
Ray Collins	...	Jefferson Almond
Mona Freeman	...	Marian Almond
Selena Royle	...	Elizabeth Almond
Paul Lees	...	Arthur Townsend
Harry Antrim	...	Mr. Abeel
Russ Conway	...	Quintus
David Thursby	...	Geier

Runtime:

115 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

UK:U | West Germany:12 (f) | South Korea:12 | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl

Filming Locations:

Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by MCA ever since.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Morris first asks Kathryn to dance at the party, she is seated with her dance card in her hand. Her fan is hanging from a string around her wrist on the same arm. Cut to a wider shot as Kathryn stands to join Morris, and suddenly her fan is in her hand, and her dance card is hanging from her wrist.

Quotes:

Austin Sloper: Do you remember her mother? Her mother who had so much grace and gaiety. This is her child.
Elizabeth Almond: Austin, no child could compete with this image you have of her mother.
Austin Sloper: You're not entitled to say that. Only I know what I lost when she died and what I got in her place.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Dallas: The Heiress (#3.11)" (1979)

Soundtrack:

Plaisir d'amour (The Joys of Love)

"Her father had broken its spring . . ."

One of my favorite movies, based on one of my favorite books. Henry James sitting in the audience would have been proud of this insightful filming of his novel, "Washington Square," because the film retains so much of the subtlety of his own writing. Usually, Hollywood eliminates any of the subtlety of a great author's voice (see the recent remake of "Washington Square" if you want to see a real Hollywoodization of a novel – it actually depicts a young Catherine peeing her pants in public – an inane "Animal House"-type Hollywood requirement that degrading a woman by showing her peeing is an erotic boost for any movie). But "The Heiress" is pure James. Olivia de Havilland is perfect as James' unlikely heroine, going from an awkward gawky girl eager to please her beloved father, to a simple, loving young woman who steadfastly stands by her lover, to an embittered middle-aged woman who understands that, as Henry James says, "the great facts of her career were that Morris Townsend had trifled with her affection, and that her father had broken its spring."

If you liked this movie, read the novel. Listen to James' descriptions of Catherine and her father and see if this isn't exactly what Ralph Richardson and Olivia de Havilland portrayed:

"Doctor Sloper would have liked to be proud of his daughter; but there was nothing to be proud of in poor Catherine."

"Love demands certain things as a right; but Catherine had no sense of her rights; she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favors."

" 'She is so soft, so simple-minded, she would be such an easy victim! A bad husband would have remarkable facilities for making her miserable; for she would have neither the intelligence nor the resolution to get the better of him.' "

"She was conscious of no aptitude for organized resentment."

"In reality, she was the softest creature in the world."

"She had been so humble in her youth that she could now afford to have a little pride . . . Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far."

Clifton Fadiman, in his introduction to "Washington Square," says that the novel's moral is: "to be right is not enough. Dr. Sloper is 'right'; he is right about the character of Townsend, he is right about his own character, he is right about the character of Catherine. But because he can offer only the insufficient truth of irony where the sufficient truth of love is required, he partly ruins his daughter's life, and lives out his own in spiritual poverty."

Dr. Sloper's contemptuous "rightness," penetrating and accurate as it is, is no substitute for the kindness and love his adoring daughter craves from him. In "The Rainmaker," a great Katharine Hepburn movie, also about a plain woman seeking love, only this time with a loving father, the character of Hepburn's father sums up this moral that "to be right is not enough" when he says to his self-righteous son:

"Noah, you're so full of what's right that you can't see what's good!"