--- title: "All This, and Heaven Too" year: 1940 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/all-this-and-heaven-too" fi1m_score: 64 critics_score: 68 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T00:11:23.762955+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T00:11:24.225898+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # All This, and Heaven Too (1940) Directed by Anatole Litvak · 2h 21m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance **Fi1m score: 64** · Critics 68 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Bette Davis behaves impeccably for 141 minutes and we rather missed the old one > Anatole Litvak’s period drama is handsomely mounted and quietly acted, with Bette Davis unusually still and Barbara O’Neil doing the shouting for everyone. It is also 141 minutes long, and about a third of them are spent waiting. ## Synopsis New York, the mid-nineteenth century. Henriette Deluzy-Desportes (Bette Davis) takes a post teaching French at a girls’ school run by Miss Haines (Janet Beecher), and finds her pupils know her name from the newspapers. Rather than resign, she tells them what happened. Paris, some years earlier: Henriette arrives at the house of the Duc de Praslin (Charles Boyer) as governess to his four children, the eldest Louise (Virginia Weidler). The house is unhappy. The Duchesse (Barbara O’Neil) is jealous of anyone her husband speaks to, her children included; the Duc has all but stopped speaking to her. Henriette wants only to do her job and calm the children; the Duchesse wants her gone. Henry Martyn Field (Jeffrey Lynn), an American clergyman, believes her before hearing a word. ## Review Anatole Litvak’s film of Rachel Field’s novel takes a real French scandal of the 1840s and turns it into a Bette Davis picture, which is to say that a woman suffers beautifully for two hours and twenty minutes while men fail to say what they mean. It is handsomely made and mostly well acted, and it is far too long. Casey Robinson’s screenplay decided early that the governess was blameless and the Duc was a gentleman, and having decided it, has nowhere much to go but slowly. Davis plays Henriette with almost none of her usual weaponry. No flashing eyes, no cigarette, no curl of the lip; she keeps her hands still and her voice low and lets the household come to her. It is a disciplined performance and for long stretches a quiet one, and we admired it more than we felt it. Boyer, as the Duc, is gentler still, a tired man who has retreated into his children, and the film’s romance consists mostly of the two of them being kind in adjoining rooms. That is the point, and it is also the problem. A love that never once raises its voice is hard to keep watching for 141 minutes. The voice that does get raised belongs to Barbara O’Neil. Her Duchesse is jealous of her husband, jealous of her own children for taking his attention, and jealous of the new governess before the woman has unpacked. O’Neil plays her in nightdresses and shawls, sitting up in bed with her hair coming down, and she is the one person on screen whose feelings are not under lock and key. The film treats her as the villain. We felt sorrier for her than it wanted us to, and the scenes in which the Duc walks out of her room in the middle of a sentence are the ones we went home thinking about. Ernest Haller shoots the Praslin house as a place of tall doors and long halls, lit by candles and windows, with the governess’s face the brightest thing in most rooms. Orry-Kelly keeps Davis in dark dresses with white collars, so that she reads as a nun or a nurse next to the Duchesse’s ruffles and silks, and the eye has picked its side before anyone speaks. Max Steiner’s score does the rest, and then some; there is a theme for the lovers that arrives every time they look at each other, and by the second hour we could hear it coming and braced. Warren Low cuts the school framing and the Paris flashback cleanly, but nobody asked him to lose half an hour, and half an hour is what it needed to lose. Virginia Weidler is good as Louise, the eldest daughter, who is old enough to understand what her mother is and young enough to be hurt by it every time. Harry Davenport does his kind old man as Pierre, a servant who takes to the governess at once. Henry Daniell arrives late as Broussais, thin-lipped and suspicious of everyone, and the picture wakes up whenever he is in it, which is not often enough. Jeffrey Lynn’s Field has almost nothing to do except be decent, and does that. Somewhere past the ninety-minute mark, with the children in bed and the adults once again standing in doorways not saying what they mean, we looked to see how much was left. Litvak has the manner of a big prestige picture, the carriages, the crowds, the panelled rooms, without the urgency of one. The scandal at the centre of the story was one of the ugliest of its century, and the film keeps it at arm’s length, in the past tense, told to schoolgirls who need protecting from it. So, apparently, do we. See it for O’Neil, for Haller’s candlelight and for Davis proving she could do quiet. See it on a wet afternoon with nothing else booked. It runs 141 minutes and carries a U certificate, and a story this small did not need the first. *Fi1m score 64, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **Variety** (90/100, inferred): This is film theatre at its best, with outstanding direction by Anatole Litvak and strong, restrained lead performances by Bette Davis and Charles Boyer that capture the delicate psychological shadings of the tragic love story. Expert workmanship throughout retains the novel's spirit despite deletions, highlighted by effective child performances. [Read](https://variety.com/1939/film/reviews/all-this-and-heaven-too-1200413092/) - **The New York Times** (70/100, inferred): The film delivers a poignant, tear-laden story of tender but frustrated love between the governess and the duke, born of their shared adoration of his children and ending in violence due to his wife's jealousy. The long runtime and somber tone may test some viewers' patience, though the lead performances carry emotional weight. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1940/07/05/archives/the-screen-all-this-and-heaven-too-with-bette-davis-and-boyer-at.html) - **Time Out**, GA (60/100, inferred): Bette Davis plays a governess accused of an affair and murder in 19th-century France, telling her story in flashback. The film is a long, gloomy haul but is lavishly mounted and sensitively acted. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/all-this-and-heaven-too) - **The New Yorker**, John C. Mosher (50/100, inferred): The adaptation turns a sensational historical murder case into a romantic, profusely staged period drama with gusto, though it lacks sufficient morbidity or neurosis except in one key performance. Bette Davis's governess moves serenely through the gloom while the central male lead fails to convey the expected intensity. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1940/07/06/1940-07-06-046-tny-cards-000003249) ## Details - **Director:** Anatole Litvak - **Director:** Anatole Litvak - **Screenplay:** Casey Robinson - **Writer:** Rachel Field - **Cinematography:** Ernest Haller - **Editor:** Warren Low - **Music:** Max Steiner - **Costume design:** Orry-Kelly - **Producer:** Anatole Litvak - **Cast:** Bette Davis as Henriette Deluzy-Desportes; Charles Boyer as Duc de Praslin; Jeffrey Lynn as Henry Martyn Field; Barbara O'Neil as Duchesse de Praslin; Virginia Weidler as Louise; Helen Westley as Madame LeMaire; Walter Hampden as Pasquier; Henry Daniell as Broussais - **Runtime:** 2h 21m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 13 July 1940 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BP3nIRxiCU ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: BR, DK, GB, IT, NO, RO, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1941: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Gaslight* (1944), Fi1m 81: Boyer again in a grand unhappy house, this time allowed to be frightening. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/gaslight.md) - *The Innocents* (1961): A governess, two children and a house that does not want her; far tauter. - *Madame de...* (1953): Ophüls on a Paris marriage coming apart, with the camera doing the talking. - *Now, Voyager* (1942): Davis, Steiner and a Robinson script, with the emotion let off the leash. - *Letter from an Unknown Woman* (1948), Fi1m 86: Another life told in flashback for a love that never quite happened, in half the time. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/letter-from-an-unknown-woman.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. 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