The Heiress (Wyler, 1949)

The Heiress (Wyler, 1949) - #TSPDT #640

The shy and clumsy daughter of a rich doctor is wooed by a beautiful young man for marriage.

The story took quite a while to unfold for me. It starts very slow and paces along until the moment that Havilland's character is denied the union by her father. I really liked the interpretation of the father, and his harsh judgement of his daughter that breaks out of him, once he loses composition and humor was quite gripping. Also de Havilland's performance left quite an impression - her growing coldness and her initial disgust at her own cruelty towards her father were the highlights for me.

Apart from that the film kept a lot of the theater-like qualities and felt a little heavily staged at one point or another. It relied on effective but very few visual clues about the interior feelings of the characters, and I would have loved to see more of this.

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