While it doesn't rank very high by the usual criteria of dialogue, plot, characterisation, or acting, this film is utterly fascinating as a portrayal of the small-mindedness and hypocrisy of Fifties America--and of Fifties American films. The other characters ridicule the idea of Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson as a couple, but almost entirely on the grounds of class--she is a widow from one of the old families of the town, living in an old house, while he is "a gardener." But how many gardeners (he actually owns a nursery) live in a huge, gorgeous converted barn in the middle of rich, beautiful countryside (ie, a property that would now be worth several million dollars, and even then, because of the land, must have been worth much more than Wyman's old house)? Of course, the more incendiary reasons for everyone's disapproval are age, sex, and money. There are only a very few, very brief, and very discreet allusions to these. Wyman never behaves in a sensual manner or trades her prim, tailored, buttoned-up clothes for anything more womanly, even though we see her having a good time at a party given by the only people in town who are jolly and informal and allow non-Wasps into their homes as guests rather than servants. Neither of Wyman's children says a word about their discomfiture that she plans to marry such a young, handsome, and, as far as they know, virile man as Rock Hudson--though, as we now know, children of whatever age are embarrassed by knowing that their parents are sexually active--even with each other. Nor do they mention their displeasure at the fact that, when she dies, their inheritance will be shared with a much younger widower (they are not troubled at the idea of her marrying a man old enough to predecease her and therefore not cut into their share).
Not only was Hudson, as we now know, poor casting for an ardent lover of a woman, he is given a personality that makes him asexual and too good to be real. In their dialogues about Wyman's fears that her children and the townspeople will shun her, he is always wise and calm, despite being much younger than she, and always has a loving, sensible, word of advice. He acts so much like a guru or priest that he becomes desexualised as he takes on the role of a detached, all-knowing observer of life. In real life, surely a young man, one who knew he was antagonising all the townspeople (his customers), would be nervous and insecure and would be angry at Wyman for taking the attitude that all the risk and sacrifice were hers. She would seem to be too old to have children--doesn't he want any?
Wyman claims to have been seventeen when she married, which, since she has two children in college, would make her at most 38. Yet she looks at least seven years older. I assumed this was Hollywood's typical flattery of its star, but looked her up afterwards and she WAS 38! It just shows how those hideous, prissy clothes and hairstyles of the period made women look much older than they were, as if youth was in itself an embarrassment. (Many women, ten or twenty years later, actually looked younger than they did in the Fifties because of the change in styles.)
But everything that makes this a poor movie in conventional terms makes it fascinating as a document--not, perhaps, of what Americans were like in the Fifties but of what they believed, or at least wanted to believe or felt they should believe. After deciding not to marry Hudson, Wyman has terrible headaches, which her doctor diagnoses as her body taking revenge (though of course the word "sex" is not mentioned). This movie conveys, in its every aspect, the pain caused at that time by hypocrisy and repression. In emotional moments, the music rises to cue our feelings, a lot of slushy strings, poor-man's Tchaikovsky. The colours and lighting are often harsh and lurid--in one scene in a bedroom in Wyman's house, what looks like fluorescent light illuminates a headache-making blue-and-orange colour scheme. Everything is artificial and confining while pretending to be natural and realistic.
It is hardly surprising that this awful decade, in which most people in serious movies seemed to be having a walking nervous breakdown, was followed by the let-it-all-hang-out Sixties. All that repression and dishonesty finally exploded, some of it into cleansing honesty and passion, some into hysteria and chaos.
There's some more hypocrisy in the title, though only for those knowledgeable about seventeenth-century literature. The title seems to refer to untrammeled, raging passion. It makes one think of the phrase "everything under the sun." Yet, though it comes from a poem by one of the most famous libertines in history, the Earl of Rochester, it treats passion lightly, even contemptuously. The rakish speaker of the poem tells his lover not to nag him about being unfaithful to her or breaking his promises, saying that if he can manage for even a minute to concentrate on her and only her, "'tis all that heaven allows," because that's how men are.
It makes one wonder whether the filmmakers gave the film this tile in all innocence, just thinking it was an exciting and romantic phrase, or whether they used it knowingly, as an inside joke, to imply that Rock Hudson isn't going to be faithful to Jane Wyman after they get together--that, perhaps, the excitement for him is in winning rather than having her, making a conquest of someone thought to be above him.
Not only was Hudson, as we now know, poor casting for an ardent lover of a woman, he is given a personality that makes him asexual and too good to be real. In their dialogues about Wyman's fears that her children and the townspeople will shun her, he is always wise and calm, despite being much younger than she, and always has a loving, sensible, word of advice. He acts so much like a guru or priest that he becomes desexualised as he takes on the role of a detached, all-knowing observer of life. In real life, surely a young man, one who knew he was antagonising all the townspeople (his customers), would be nervous and insecure and would be angry at Wyman for taking the attitude that all the risk and sacrifice were hers. She would seem to be too old to have children--doesn't he want any?
Wyman claims to have been seventeen when she married, which, since she has two children in college, would make her at most 38. Yet she looks at least seven years older. I assumed this was Hollywood's typical flattery of its star, but looked her up afterwards and she WAS 38! It just shows how those hideous, prissy clothes and hairstyles of the period made women look much older than they were, as if youth was in itself an embarrassment. (Many women, ten or twenty years later, actually looked younger than they did in the Fifties because of the change in styles.)
But everything that makes this a poor movie in conventional terms makes it fascinating as a document--not, perhaps, of what Americans were like in the Fifties but of what they believed, or at least wanted to believe or felt they should believe. After deciding not to marry Hudson, Wyman has terrible headaches, which her doctor diagnoses as her body taking revenge (though of course the word "sex" is not mentioned). This movie conveys, in its every aspect, the pain caused at that time by hypocrisy and repression. In emotional moments, the music rises to cue our feelings, a lot of slushy strings, poor-man's Tchaikovsky. The colours and lighting are often harsh and lurid--in one scene in a bedroom in Wyman's house, what looks like fluorescent light illuminates a headache-making blue-and-orange colour scheme. Everything is artificial and confining while pretending to be natural and realistic.
It is hardly surprising that this awful decade, in which most people in serious movies seemed to be having a walking nervous breakdown, was followed by the let-it-all-hang-out Sixties. All that repression and dishonesty finally exploded, some of it into cleansing honesty and passion, some into hysteria and chaos.
There's some more hypocrisy in the title, though only for those knowledgeable about seventeenth-century literature. The title seems to refer to untrammeled, raging passion. It makes one think of the phrase "everything under the sun." Yet, though it comes from a poem by one of the most famous libertines in history, the Earl of Rochester, it treats passion lightly, even contemptuously. The rakish speaker of the poem tells his lover not to nag him about being unfaithful to her or breaking his promises, saying that if he can manage for even a minute to concentrate on her and only her, "'tis all that heaven allows," because that's how men are.
It makes one wonder whether the filmmakers gave the film this tile in all innocence, just thinking it was an exciting and romantic phrase, or whether they used it knowingly, as an inside joke, to imply that Rock Hudson isn't going to be faithful to Jane Wyman after they get together--that, perhaps, the excitement for him is in winning rather than having her, making a conquest of someone thought to be above him.