Plot
The film starts by showing us the novelist Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde) who has been released and is traveling home after two years in prison. In a flashback (which runs for almost the whole duration of the film) we see how Richard meets beautiful socialite Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney) on a train. Ellen falls in love with him, mainly because he so closely resembles her recently deceased father, to whom she was obsessively attached.
Ellen is already engaged to another man (Vincent Price), but she jilts him and rapidly marries Richard, who at first is fascinated not only with Ellen's beauty, but with her exotic and intense manner. It gradually becomes apparent however that Ellen is pathologically jealous towards any other person and any other activity that her husband cares about.
Two tragedies strike Richard: the "accidental" drowning death of his younger disabled brother, whom he dearly loved, and the "accidental" death of Richard's unborn son when Ellen "trips" and falls down a flight of stairs. The husband starts to suspect that his wife is directly responsible for these two deaths. When Ellen confesses to him what she did and why she did it, he leaves her. She then decides to kill herself with poison, making sure that in doing so she frames (for the apparent crime of murder), her adoptive sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain), a sweet and wholesome woman of whom Richard is very fond.
Ellen's ex-fiance is the prosecutor for Ruth's trial. The trial is going very badly for Ruth, who under pressure has admitted that she does in fact love Richard, a fact she had previously kept hidden. Then Richard testifies about Ellen's insane jealousy and her confessions to him. Ruth is acquitted, and Richard is sentenced to 2 years in prison for his part in the two murders (he had become an accessory to the crimes by virtue of withholding knowledge of Ellen's actions).
The flashback ends, and Richard is seen being welcomed home with a loving embrace from Ruth.
Read more about this topic: Leave Her To Heaven
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