Saturday Night at the Movies: Cruel Inheritance

The Lessons We Teach

What do you want to leave your children? That’s the question lurking behind my posts this month, whether about the stimulant-laced legacy of divorce or the villainous perpetuation of man-hating misery. So no, you’re not getting a comedy tonight.

My pick is not the feel-good movie of the year (for a good list of those, see here), but it may be cinema’s best ever exploration of the subtle ways in which a parent can poison a child’s soul.

On paper, Dr. Sloper is bequeathing a great gift to his only child, Catherine: an immense fortune. In the words of a philosopher of my youth, however, mo money, mo problems. Fortune hunters must be kept at bay (Miss Havisham here nods knowingly). In the hands of a lesser storyteller, that’s as deep as the story would get - is Catherine’s suitor after her love, or her fortune?

Yet William Wyler is no lesser storyteller, but one of the greatest directors of all time, working off a story by Henry James, with the acting talent of the legendary stars Olivia De Havilland as Catherine and Ralph Richardson as her father.

The Heiress is a movie about inheritance, but not of the financial kind. If Catherine is easy prey to fortune hunters, it is not because she’s so bursting with money, it is because she is so deeply lacking in love. Desperate for any glimmer of affection - the affection she knows her own father does not feel for her - she may be willing to risk all on the chance that some man, any man, might mean it when he says he loves her. In modern parlance, this is known to pick-up artist scumbags as a girl with ‘daddy issues,’ aka easy winnings.

But wait - there’s more! The twin strands discussed so far - on one level, a movie about a rich girl falling for a con man, on another, about a child forced daily to endure her parent’s evident dislike of her - would have made for a very good movie indeed. What turns it into one of the best ever? Wyler and co kick it up a notch and reach a third level, one that comes into play in the unforgettable ending of the movie: the ultimate revenge plot. John Wick can eat his heart out. A bullet can only damage the body. What Catherine does, well, all I will say is that if you think she is too cruel, here’s how she puts it: “I have been taught by masters.”

After watching, I think you will agree that Olivia De Havilland, easily in the top ten actresses of all time, heartily deserved the Oscar she won for this role. It was her second Oscar of the decade, and came a year after she was robbed of another one (sorry, but no way should she have lost for The Snake Pit). Perhaps most importantly to her, it put her one Oscar ahead of her hated younger sister, Joan Fontaine. The sisters may not have gotten along, or even spoken to each other for years, but they remain the only siblings to have won lead actor Academy Awards - quite the inheritance of performing talent, at least!

Destruction comes easier than creation, so I suppose it’s easier on some level to make movies on How Not to Be a Parent than to make ones showing you genuinely wonderful families to emulate. If you would like to turn tonight’s selection into a double header and pair the cautionary tale of Catherine and pere with an edifying family dynamic, my suggestion is another Wyler masterpiece, Friendly Persuasion, which I covered earlier here. You don’t have to be a perfect dad, but try to aim closer to Gregory Peck than Ralph Richardson.

If you can leave your kids enough dough to not have to steal stale bread, more power to you. But never let working for that almighty dollar make you forget that the true inheritance, the only one worth leaving, is the one built on love, on the firm foundation of the true Almighty. I sincerely pray that is one we can all pass along to our children.

Hope you enjoy this week’s selection and have a wonderful, fortune-hunter-free weekend!