Bitter Cruelty Is Legacy of ‘Heiress’

“The Heiress” has one of Hollywood’s more memorable lines: “Yes, I can be very cruel . . . I’ve been taught by masters.”

That bit of spleen is uttered by Olivia de Havilland near the movie’s end. Her face is darkened with taut vindictiveness, even sadism. The masters she’s talking about are the father of her character, Catherine Sloper, and the gigolo who seduced her.

The 1949 picture, screening Friday night as the latest installment in UC Irvine’s “Tragedy and Comedy” series, is all about cruelty. It’s based on one of Henry James’ cruelest novels, “Washington Square,” and as an adaptation, it’s true to the book’s meanness.

De Havilland won an Oscar as best actress for her performance, and it must have been more for the last 30 minutes than the more than an hour that precedes it. Her portrayal as the early, naive Catherine is fraught with fidgety, girlish overacting (her blundering seems more silly than complex), but when Catherine is finally left with a bitter heart, watch out. De Havilland transforms her into a quiet gargoyle, able to exact vengeance with a tight smile of glee.

The story settles on Catherine, a plain girl with the self-conscious shyness of a born neurotic. We know right off that this moth has the beautiful soul of a butterfly (something about her pained, overly aware eyes), but all of life ruins and distorts her. She can’t seem to do anything right, except embroidery, which her domineering father (Ralph Richardson) routinely points out.

Director William Wyler pushes relentlessly at the bitter relationship between father and daughter but somehow keeps the simmering contentiousness genteel, even refined--the tale is, after all, set in New York high society. In this respect, Wyler captures the politely mannered viciousness of James’ novel.

The father, a successful doctor, lives in a past populated by his now-dead but once beautiful wife. Catherine can’t compare with her memory, and her father won’t let her forget it. When she puts on her mother’s red dress in a desperate effort to please, he frowns, abruptly telling Catherine that her mother was lovely and “dominated the color,” something she’ll never do.

Then, like a miracle too good to be true, arrives Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), a handsome, liquid-tongued suitor with one obvious defect--he has no money. With his eye on the prize of her large inheritance, he woos Catherine, a frail game too easily snared.

But her father sees through his scam and intervenes, leaving Catherine in a vise created by the two men and her conflicted emotions. Catherine’s cynical revelations about her father and Morris, really the only men in her life, is the gyre on which “The Heiress” turns.

Richardson and Clift are outstanding.

Especially fine is Richardson, conveying with ease the father’s deeply rooted and complicated motivations, based on an almost savage disappointment, for mistreating his daughter.

Clift’s performance reminds us once again what a remarkably natural actor he could be. He was Brando before there was a Brando.

* What: William Wyler’s “The Heiress.”

* When: Friday, Feb. 4, at 7 and 9 p.m.

* Where: The UC Irvine Student Center Crystal Cove Auditorium, Campus Drive and Bridge Road.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Jamboree Road and head south to Campus Drive and take a left. Turn right on Bridge Road and head into the campus.

* Wherewithal: $2 to $4.

* Where to call: (714) 856-6359.