The Heiress is a movie that flouts all the movie conventions of its time. The awkward daughter (Olivia de Havilland) never blossoms into a beautiful princess; her romantic-albeit-penniless wooer (Montgomery Clift) is really a bit of a scumbag; the strict and overbearing father who stands in the way of their union (the great Ralph Rrichardson) turns out to be a man of character; the kindly and supportive aunt is a bit of an airhead.

A lesser movie would wear its anti-conventionalism on its sleeve, and then betray itself in its final act. In the Heiress, on the other hand, it takes quite a while for the four main characters to develop (even when they finally do there are still ambiguities), and remarkably, the film stays true to itself till the very end:

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9/10