gene tierney

decomarc Gene Tierney was one of the most underrated actresses of the Golden Era – Gene was certainly much more than a pretty face and never afraid to show a dark, off-putting and arrogant side in her characters. And the words ‘more than a pretty face’ not only refer to her talents as an actress but also to the fact that the word ‘pretty’ doesn’t even begin to describe her riveting and transcendent beauty which sometimes made it hard for her to get the credit as an actress. Gene Tierney seems to fit into the category of a flawless and elegant beauty but she also possessed an exotic, even more obvious pulchritude that made her an almost surreal presence in her pictures. In black and white, Gene Tierney could glow and shine even in the darkest settings, in color she almost looked like a painting. Gene Tierney’s face also knows a certain hardness and bitterness that helped her to always show the danger and rage hiding behind her eyes. Her beauty, despite its elegance and style, never appears innocent or soft – instead, she could explore various shades and layers in her characters, turning her face more than once into a window to her inner feelings and this way extend the women she played beyond her own beauty. As just mentioned, she could portray women who were charming and graceful but also spoiled, mean-spirited, arrogant and self-righteous. This was never displayed better than in The Razor’s Edge in which she constantly pushed the character of her alcoholic friend to the edge of her own mental and physical stability to regain her influence over the man she loved her whole life but rejected too many times. It’s a realistic portrayal in which Gene Tierney was willing to create a strongly off-putting but still intriguing character. This unlikable, ignorant quality somehow was very often visible in the women she played – and Gene Tierney’s voice, her elegant but also hard face, her representation of the feeling of constant superiority helped her immensely in her creation of Ellen Berent, a woman who slowly, step by step, reveals her obsessive nature and a feeling to have the right to sacrifice the existence of others for her own happiness. Gene Tierney was certainly the right choice for the role as her unique, fascinating beauty and ability to be so completely engaging from the first moment on helped to make the sudden romance between Ellen and Richard believable and also created the following tone of the story in which Ellen more and more showed her true nature but still possessed enough appeal and charm to keep Richard close to her. She had this preternatural ability to be alluring and icy at the same time not too many people can balance that out. Tierney could change emotional colors with a magnificent yet subtle clarity. Her appeal which intrigued from the start never totally disappeared. In the film The Ghost And Mrs. Muir (1947, 20th Century-Fox) who else could be so believably in love with a ghost then Gene Tierney. Leave Her To Heaven is Tierney's finest hour it was a role and a film that suited her to perfection. Tierney underplays the role of Ellen Berent understandably giving us a chilling portrayal of evil on film like no other for it contains one of cinema’s greatest monsters, where Tierney is driven to destruction with such a single-minded, inhuman ferocity that it seems downright supernatural. Technicolor loved Gene Tierney, showcasing not only her enchanted and flawless beauty but also the currents of thought and passion pulsing behind that exquisite mask. But its her knowing mother played by Mary Phillips that sums up Ellen with this quote, “There’s nothing wrong with Ellen. It’s just that she loves too much." The scene that shocked 1945 audiences back then still packs a pretty good punch. The scene depicts Ellen in a row boat as she watches her husband’s crippled brother Danny drown just a few feet from her. In a state of trance, she becomes a pure object–she is as cold, impassive, and frozen as a marbled statue. It’s impossible not to notice the smooth, marble planes of Tierney’s face and the clothes she wears. The absence of background music and the natural sounds of the outdoors make the sequence feel even more realistic. Ellen’s deviance is monstrously frightening, because she commits murder by taking an active inaction rather than engaging in an act of violent killing. Her blank expression and statue-like posture are underlined by her heart-shaped sunglasses, which conceal not only her eyes but also her soul. In 1945, Tierney competed for the Best Actress Academy Award with Joan Crawford who won for Mildred Pierce, Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” Greer Garson in “The Valley of Decision,” and Jennifer Jones in “Love Letters.”