In the celebrated work of Bershadsky--Cecotti--Ooguri--Vafa the genus one string partition function in the B-model is identified with certain analytic torsion of the Hodge Laplacian on a K\"ahler manifold. In a joint work with Shu Shen (IMJ-PRG) and Jianqing Yu (USTC) we study the analogous torsion in Landau--Ginzburg models. I will explain the corresponding index theorem based on the asymptotic expansion of the heat kernel of the Schr\"odinger operator. I will also explain the rigorous definition of the BCOV torsion for homogeneous polynomials on ${\mathbb C}^N$. Lastly I will explain the conjecture stating that in the Calabi--Yau case the BCOV torsion solves the holomorphic anomaly equation for marginal deformations.