Romancefest 2017: The Heiress

Director William Wyler and Montgomery Clift return to Romancefest with the 1949 film THE HEIRESS, based on the novel WASHINGTON SQUARE by Henry James. Olivia de Havilland stars as the daughter of a wealthy widowed physician (Ralph Richardson) in New York who lives near Washington Square Park. She's shy and quiet and it's beginning to look like she'll never marry off when she meets Montgomery Clift as the charming but less-rich (read broke) cousin of her cousin's new fiancee.

Richardson immediately suspects Clift is no good, mostly because he inherited some cash and spent all of it touring Europe, rather than joining society as a gentleman and trying to grow his fortune. We also realize early on Richardson doesn't think much of his daughter, either. Even though she's nice, and thoughtful, and devoted, and smart, and pretty, and Olivia de Havilland, he views her as a boring disappointment, especially compared to his dead wife, who he still worships.

The thing is, Clift is super convincing, and we want everything to work out for sweet and shy de Havilland, and her Dad is such a dick, that we're convinced it's true love. I don't want to give anything away except to say that not everything is as it seems, and about halfway through the movie we're as unsure what to think as de Havilland is, as she waits for Clift to come and sweep her away.

I've been in love with de Havilland ever since I saw her in THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD back when I was 10 or so. Around the same time I saw GONE WITH THE WIND and even though de Havilland's Melanie infuriates Scarlett O'Hara with her perfectness, my love was only cemented further.

Here, she first gets to play to type as the perfect, well-behaved daughter and then later against type as a bitter woman on a revenge-fueled quest. Clift also gets to go both ways, first as a legitimately charming love interest and later cashing in on his built-in edge as a guy we're not sure what to think of.