New Picture

The Heiress (Paramount) is a handsomely mounted, sumptuously acted film about a wallflower whose only social grace is a neat hand at embroidery. Directed and produced by William Wyler (Wuttiering Heights, The Best Years of Our Lives), The Heiress bears the Wyler trademark of painstaking high gloss. It is also a solid and impressive movie aimed at adults.

Based on a Broadway misinterpretation of Henry James's Washington Square, the film shows a timid, plain heiress (Olivia de Havilland) courted by a charming idler (Montgomery Clift). Her father (Ralph Richardson), who regards her as a hopelessly unlovable girl, turns her into just that. Using her inheritance as a weapon, he drives off the fortune hunter and blasts her only chance of happiness. The Heiress is something less than the stern and oppressive tragedy James wrote (for one thing, Olivia de Havilland's seductive shyness and warmth make her an unconvincing candidate for spinsterhood), but it still has enough strength to make it better than the run of movies.

Ralph Richardson's acting skill creates a highly idealistic, moralistic, and intelligent egoist who seems to be smiling behind every sarcastic remark. Richardson can flick his cane, turn a phrase or look mildly amazed with almost quicksilver brilliance.

Hollywood movies have not been quite the same since Laurence Olivier's Henry V showed how much meaning and sensuousness can be put over with human

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