The Heiress (1949)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: William Wyler

Writers: Augustus Goetz, Ruth Goetz, Henry James

Cinematographer: Leo Tover

Composer: Aaron Copland

Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, Betty Linley

Adapted by husband and wife team Augustus and Ruth Goetz from their own 1947 play, which itself was based on Henry James’s short story Washington Square (1880), Wyler’s masterful depiction of the cynical awakening of a young ingénue, silly enough to still believe in love, is, with its precise, expressive mise en scène, consummate central performance, and unsentimental tone, perhaps Wyler’s finest work. Iain.Stott