All That Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk, the German-born filmmaker and theatre director, who has never really achieved any kind of household fame and remains obscure to many film buffs today, was best known for a series of big budget American melodramas that both typify and subvert Hollywood drama of the 1950s. The most outrageously enjoyable of these is his super-rich family saga Written on the Wind, but this is perhaps his finest achievement.

Jane Wyman plays Cary Scott, a recent widow nearing the end of middle age who’s children’s college studies ensure she is alone most of the time. Her best friend Sara Warren (the ever-wonderful Agnes Moorehead) wants her to join the country club and regain a social life, and she reluctantly agrees. A friendship soon springs up between her and Ron Kirby (Sirk regular Rock Hudson) who prunes her garden occasionally. Shunning her ‘safe’ suitor Harvey, she opts for Ron and begins to fall in love with him. His harmonious existence growing trees and his relaxed, welcoming entourage of friends is a far cry from the constrictions of her social strata. The romance blooms, and before long Cary wants to take him to the country club to introduce him to her friends and show him off. As awkward in a suit as he is indulging in meaningless small talk, it is a disaster. To make matters worse, both her children are also bitterly opposed to their marriage.

A delicate, exquisitely beautiful piece of cinema, All That Heaven Allows deals with the oppression and prejudice faced when straying from the norm and introducing the unexpected into a routine existence, the way narrow, instinctive assumptions cause real harm and how blithely people destroy one another’s lives in a myriad of heartless, careless ways.

I hesitate to use the word “melodrama” to describe this film, as it’s a great deal more than the label suggests. Sirk’s glossy, seamless style employing luscious colours, smooth, simple camera movements and the musical underscoring of every mood and emotion (melodrama at its most literal) means one might initially be drafted into thinking the film is nothing more than another matinee weepy, and as such inclined not to take it seriously, though nothing could be further from the truth. Despite Sirk’s own initial misgivings about the project – as he puts it “I was trying to give that cheap stuff a meaning,” - he succeeded brilliantly, not at becoming another a trifling, cynical exercise in emotional manipulation, but a film that genuinely says as much about human nature as your average Bergman, Antonioni or Allen.

Incorporating the tragic irony and symbolism from his theatrical days in expressionist pre-war Germany, he tells his story as much with the people involved as the artefacts and objects associated with them. One particularly revealing incident about Cary’s sexual and romantic frustration is at the start of the film – going out for a country club dinner with the hopelessly bland Harvey, Cary bravely dons a scarlet, low-cut dress, the defiant effect of which she is well aware of. At the end of the evening, Harvey offers a half-hearted proposal, ensuring her they will have a future of “companionship and affection”. Her disappointment is palpable.

Sirk’s envisaging of Rock Hudson’s character borders on pastiche. Constantly surrounded by nature imagery - living in a greenhouse, growing trees, feeding wild deer from his hand and probably knowing every flora and fauna in the area - he is a vision of earthy, sensitive, chiselled perfection. However, he is also unprepared to give up his perfect way of life, putting all the strain on Cary. We can only assume he is being cruel to be kind, forcing her to make the right decision, but the pressure at such a crucial time from the last person who should applying it inevitably backfires. And when it does, it’s painful to watch as she goes reluctantly back to her empty house at Christmas, with only the gift of a television from her children for company.

Jane Wyman is superb as Cary, conveying the character’s melancholy and social discomfort perfectly, and one of the finest performances of her career. Hudson plays his masculine ideal for all the role’s worth. Two standouts in the fine supporting cast are Jacqueline de Wit as chief gossip Mona Plash, delivering devastating remarks with the sweetest smile, and Gloria Talbott as Cary’s psychoanalyst daughter, emotions in turmoil just discovering her sexuality but attempting to approach everything from an objective angle.

Russell Metty’s beautiful Technicolor photography, giving the film a vivid watercolour look, is quite breathtaking to behold, especially in his use of reds and blues. The score by Frank Skinner is elegant and perfectly pitched, with an outstanding use of romantic strings and a gorgeous main theme.

The film’s conclusion is full of bitter irony and shaky uncertainty, as Cary’s toils and hardship haven’t nearly come to an end, but it is far from unhappy. Exactly how much can one endure in the quest for real love, the picture asks? A great deal, when hope is involved, and while not exactly blazingly original, it is a life-affirming conclusion to a poignant, sincere and desperately underrated film.