John M. Stahl’s film may look like a Douglas Sirk melodrama, but it’s as dark as the starkest of noir. Gene Tierney received her lone Oscar nomination for her turn as Ellen Berent, a figure who stands as one of the most complicated figures of the era.
Painted in another lacquer Ellen might be a witch in a horror film, or a vindictive empress, but in Stahl’s layered movie she is presented as an intricate figure, one whose crimes are terrible but one whose past and mental illness is treated with a sense of complexity ill afforded to such characters.
This sense of complexity extends to the film’s visual palette. Leon Shamroy won an Oscar for his work here, with the film’s Technicolor photography held up as a standout example of the form.
The Glass Family 