Review #1,410: 'All That Heaven Allows' (1955)

German-born film maker Douglas Sirk grew up watching the ground-breaking expressionist films his country pioneered in the 20's and 30's, when movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu were making full use of shadow techniques and angular sets that were as wonderfully warped as the minds of their characters. After fleeing the Nazis with his Jewish wife, Sirk - born Hans Detlef Sierck - worked in Europe before arriving in Hollywood, where he would ultimately become remembered for his ravishing melodramas. One of his most popular, All That Heaven Allows, saw Sirk fully embracing the expressionist pictures of his birth country, adapting these techniques for 1950's Americana, and employing them to expose the ugly underbelly of a Technicolor world he would make equally as beautiful.

The middle-aged Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is still trying to make sense of life after the death of her husband. Her children, who insist she purchases a television to fill up her spare time, are all grown up and pursuing careers of their own, while her friends at the stuffy country club seem unhealthily invested in finding her a new husband. There's no shortage of men lining up to declare their interest, but the only man to truly catch her eye is the dashing Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), the gardener who tends to the neighbourhood's shrubs and bushes. He's certainly handsome and charming enough, but Ron is below Cary's social status, favouring a care-free life with close companions and building whatever he needs with his own hands. This doesn't bother Cary, and if anything is the reason she falls completely in love with him. But everybody around her takes offence at a widow shacking up with a younger man, and look down their noses at a man who doesn't fit in with their ideal social balance.

Wyman is superb as a woman who knows her heart's desire, but hesitates at the idea of upsetting those holding up the foundations of a privileged life. It isn't that she doesn't want to leave a life of dull conversations and social gossip - on the contrary she is profoundly bored with it - but it's all that she knows. Having been ushered into this world by her late husband, the thought of a life without assurances is simply terrifying. Her own children even turn their backs at the thought of a younger man seducing their mother, and see Ron as a threat to their inheritance. Sirk brings this conflict to life with lashings of vivid reds and blues, reflecting both mood and temperament, as Cary desperately struggles to contain the waves of uproar lapping through her community. As the gossips bicker and the older single men puff out their chests, Sirk dissects the seemingly harmonious and postcard-perfect family unit of the Eisenhower-era, and finds an ugly heart beating beneath. It's the kind of thing David Lynch would explore more overtly a couple of decades later, employing the same soap-opera sheen as Sirk does here to give the world an even more vacuous feel. All That Heavens Allows is also a gorgeous and engrossing love story, lending joy to what is otherwise a damning social commentary.


Directed by: Douglas Sirk
Starring: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey, Gloria Talbott, William Reynolds
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie