Rage in Heaven is a 1941 film directed by W.S. van Dyke.
In Paris, a deeply disturbed man has been confined to a mental institution. The psychiatrist in charge has called the British consul, because the man is believed to be English, but the man escapes.
Cut to Phillip Monrell (Robert Montgomery), a rich young wastrel, in Paris, running into his best friend Ward Andrews (George Sanders). Phillip invites Ward to come visit the Monrell estate back in England. They arrive and simultaneously discover that Phillip's mother has engaged as a personal companion the extremely good-looking Stella Bergen (Ingrid Bergman). Both Phillip and Ward are enchanted by Stella, but it's Phillip that wins her heart, and they are married. Soon however Phillip begins to act erratically and it becomes clear (to the viewer) that he is the man who escaped from the asylum. Phillip fixates on an imagined love affair between Stella and Ward, and grows more and more obsessed. Soon he takes violent action.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Law: The Happy Ending comes when Stella, frantically searching for Phillip's suicide note/Motive Rant, finds it a matter of hours before Ward's execution. She calls "the governor"—actually the prison warden—and gets him to halt the execution. This is the American cliche where a call to the governor of a state saves a condemned man's life, transplanted to Britain, where things don't work that way. (Prison wardens can't halt executions on their own initiative.)
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Confirmation that Phillip is indeed violently insane comes when he kills Stella's little kitten, because Stella and Ward were together when she found it.
- Grande Dame: Mrs. Monrell, a haughty old lady who has been running the family steel mill for many years since her husband's death. She insists that Phillip stay home and take his place as the heir to the family fortune.
- Grand Staircase Entrance: It isn't that grand really, as Stella is dressed in a sensible pantsuit when she comes to the top of the stairs and greets newly arrived Phillip and Ward. But the effect is the same as the two men, at the bottom of the stairs, look up and boggle at her beauty.
- Have You Told Anyone Else?: A variation. A man at the steel mill just fell to his death from a high platform without a safety railing, and Ward is showing Phillip where it happened. Phillip asks "You say no one saw him fall?", and gets confirmation, because of the height and the glare from molten steel. He then tries to push Ward off the platform, but Ward turns around just in time.
- Love Triangle: Ward really did have feelings for Stella, but he stepped aside when Phillip won the contest. Phillip, prone to fits of insane jealousy, then fixates on the idea that Stella and Ward are having an affair behind his back.
- No Peripheral Vision: Stella is strolling through the grounds of the mansion when she hears a whistle. She looks up and sees Phillip, sitting just a few feet above her in the tree branch she just walked under.
- Race Against the Clock: The ending has Stella searching for Phillip's diary, which she believes must contain a suicide note. She finds it, cunningly hidden in a re-bound book, and calls the prison and gets the execution halted at the last moment.
- Sleeping Single: Almost always happened in 1940s films, of course, but in this instance it works to reinforce the plot, as Stella is growing more uneasy about her unstable husband.
- Suicide, Not Murder: Phillip does this. He carefully arranges his death, getting Ward to put his prints on the hilt of the knife by disguising it, staging a loud argument for people to hear, soaking the grounds so Ward will leave footprints as he leaves, wrecking the room to fake a fight, and then killing himself by Inertial Impalement onto a knife wedged into the door jamb. It works as Ward is convicted of murder (but Stella saves him in the end).
- Thanatos Gambit: Phillip elaborate stages his own Suicide, Not Murder death with the express purpose of getting Ward tried and executed. It almost works, but Stella finds the evidence to save Ward at the last moment.
- Widow's Weeds: Stella is wearing the standard black dress and veil at the murder trial, which makes it awkward when the prosecutor points her out and says that Ward killed Phillip so he could have her.
