User Reviews

At times, the aesthetic appeal of a film is so overwhelming, it surpasses the draw of the big-name stars and plot. And "All That Heaven Allows" is one of those rare examples. Anyone familiar with Douglas Sirk-directed projects knows his grandiose style. And this 1955 masterpiece sums up the best of Sirk drama, with the surface sheen, thundering music, noted stars and biting social commentary. This film, in fact, is so beautiful, that it requires repeated viewings just to be able to take it all in.

Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson re-team from Sirk's inferior "Magnificent Obsession" that was such a hit the year before. In this story, Wyman plays a wealthy widow bound to the claustrophobic confines of her uppity New England town. Her friends and two grown children do their best to convince her to marry Harvey, a stuffy and older neighborhood bachelor. But Wyman wants more. She ends up falling for her younger gardener, played by Hudson. After bonding over the virtues of the silver-tipped spruce, they embark on a love affair which is rejected by the community and Wyman's own children. They feel she is far too upstanding to be with a gardener. The reluctance of those around her to accept this relationship cause Wyman to have to choose between love or respect from her town.

Sirk takes what is a sappy, predictable tale and turns it into a visual feast. This is true eye candy for film buffs. Sirk sets the stage for this story against a heightened background of the reds, golds and yellows of a New England autumn. Every detail from Agnes Moorehead's red hair to sunsets to Wyman's lipstick and even the cars is given the Technicolor treatment to the max. Sirk's knack for visual irony is also heavily present throughout. The film opens with a shot of the town's clocktower with pigeons roosting. The pigeons are divided into two groups - a gaggle of black pigeons representing the townspeople on one end, and on the other are two white pigeons nuzzling, representing Wyman and Hudson and the division they face in this community. This is just for starters. Other stunning examples are when Sirk uses shades of blues and greys and reds to convey character's feelings of sadness or anger. And of course there is the famous television set scene. And through all of this emotion and cotton candy extravaganza is Frank Skinner's lush score that soars in all the right places. "All That Heaven Allows" is a first-rate classic that is a must for fans of Sirk or anyone who are devotees of lush melodramas from the studio heyday.

Due to the success of 1954's "Magnificent Obsession", Universal once again called on Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, and director Douglas Sirk for this passionate, heart-gripping look at the hypocrisy of small-town America. Wyman, a rich widow in this well-to-do New England town, falls in love with her gardener (Hudson) and all hell breaks loose. Her community ridicules her and her grown children are horrified by her. She finds herself having to choose love or the respect of those around her.

The cinematography is beyond extraordinary, the score by Frank Skinner is unbelievably moving, Wyman is exquisite, and Sirk gives some of the best direction of his career. A really classy melodrama and completely worthwhile.

Douglas Sirk is a truly underrated director, and this film shows why. Although this film becomes more highly regarded as the years go by, especially by non-Americans, it is usually regarded as just a well made soaper. Big mistake. This is a very angry film, a scathing commentary on the conformity and mindlessness that characterized much of the 1950s. Remember, this film was made in 1955, before there were any beatniks or hippies, before the civil rights movement, before there was any pot smoking, before anyone beyond the fringes questioned any of the basic values underlying capitalist America. America was at the peak of its power and prestige, and this was perhaps the first mainstream film that questioned the values that presumably were responsible for that ascendancy. Because this film is essentially about class and the primacy that human relationships must have over material gain, social acceptance, and social conformity.

Think of the forbidden (at the time) themes that this film deals with. Older woman, younger man. The shallowness, insipidity, and snobbery of the upper middle class arrivistes who have "made it," all of which masks their basic insecurity, unhappiness, and self-loathing. A male lead who doesn't care about acceptance by anyone, who doesn't care about money or success, who just wants to be happy and "do his own thing," well over a decade before that phrase was coined. The Wyman character foolishly (at first) decides that acceptance by her peers and children is more important than finding happiness with a man she truly loves, and what does she end up with for companionship? A television set! This was the decade in which "The Lonely Crowd" was published, and this film exemplifies that concept, as well as striking examples of other- vs. inner-directed, far better than any other film of its time.

Sirk was truly a visionary, well ahead of his time. This was why this film inspired Fassbinder's "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" and Todd Haynes' "Far from Heaven." It is all the more powerful for having been made then and in not being a retrospective look, as is "Far from Heaven," from a more "enlightened" future time. For its social import, I rate this 9/10.

Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows could stand as a lesson about how, in gifted hands, movies can surmount and surpass their source material, elevating the routine into the rhapsodic. And that's more than a matter of just fleshing out the roles with appealing talent or supplying de luxe production values. It takes a sensibility that can suggest the complexity under the commonplace and spot the verities hidden beneath the clichés.

It's an alert sensibility that many emigrés from Europe, apprenticed in the artistic ferment between the wars, brought with them to Hollywood (among them this Dane, born Detlef Sierck). Hollywood gave them more money and security than they'd probably ever known, and when it also gave them hackneyed and meretricious scripts to capture on film, they devised new ways to freshen them up and, against all odds, make them work.

On its surface, All That Heaven Allows is little more than polite fiction from women's magazines circa mid-20th-century (and would today be a romance paperback with a beefcake cover). Youngish widow Jane Wyman starts keeping company with free-spirited Rock Hudson, her much younger gardener; despite wagging tongues among her country-club set and clucks of disapproval from her grown children, she finds, after many a twist and turn, true love.

But from his opening shot Sirk creates a dreamy, storybook world, so Disney-pretty that he might as well have started with `Once upon a time....' Swirling downward from a church steeple in a New England autumn, he shows us an affluent enclave just a commuter-train trip away from New York. Luncheons are taken on patios, station wagons the approved mode of travel and martinis the drink of the evening - the kind of town New Yorkers played by Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck meant when they referred to their `country' places in Connecticut.

In this idyllic bower, Wyman has resigned herself to a stately and well-appointed widowhood; she half-heartedly resists friend Agnes Moorehead's lures to put her back on the market (women without men, by choice or circumstance, just don't fit in). But Wyman's too classy for the boozed-up louts and gossipy shrews in her former set, and still too vital to succumb to valetudinarian Conrad Nagel's proposal for tepid `companionship.'

And that's when Hudson, come to prune the branches, catches her eye - and, somewhat less probably, she his. He whisks her out to see his tree farm, and they explore an old mill on his property (`I love to poke around old buildings,' she explains). When she suggests he fix up the dump and live there, it's to the horn theme from the last movement of Brahms' 1st Symphony. No wonder she ends up staying the weekend.

Here Sirk introduces a subtly subversive element: Hudson's friends, in discordant counterpoint to hers (who dismiss him as `nature boy' and a `good-looking set of muscles'). His are an amiably casual network of all ages and backgrounds who have opted out of the rat race or never cared to enter it (the `quiet desperation' passage from Thoreau's Walden screws the point home). Though their style of merrymaking brings to mind Old World folk festivals, they represent a segment of society rarely if ever seen in films of the era: Low-profile, thoughtful rebels against the smug status quo - post-war pioneers of the voluntary simplicity movement inflamed with a touch of ecological consciousness ( now laughed off as tree-hugging). It's a startling glimpse into a below-the-radar counterculture that must have been around even in the mid-'50s (and there's not a beret, goatee or bongo drum among them - they're presented without a hint of condescension or marginalization).

Hudson proposes, Wyman accepts. Even her children (Gloria Talbott and William Reynolds) are thrilled, so long as they assume her remarriage will be to stuffy, respectable Nagel. When they're told that their new stepdad will be the stud who cleans up the yard come spring and come fall, they go rigid with upper-middle-class snobbery. (And the specter of Mrs. Grundy floats in when Moorehead asks if people will think Wyman and Hudson were keeping company when Wyman's husband was still kicking.) Stranded between her familiar past and an uncertain future, Wyman begs for more time; Hudson, hewing to his mantra `to thine own self be true,' delivers an ultimatum....

Abetted by director of photography Russell Metty, Sirk paints this soapish weeper with a gorgeous palette of hues and tints (a feat that Todd Haynes emulated in his Sirk hommage Far From Heaven, for which this movie served as template). Now and again, he washes half the screen in an autumnal green-gold, the other in an enchanted-night mauve, situating characters at cross purposes in their respective halves.

Of course, splitting or doubling the screen, through barriers or mirror shots, is one of Sirk's signature tropes, reaching its apex when Wyman's hangdog face stares back from a newly delivered television set, a Christmas present from the kids (`Here's all the company you need. Drama, comedy, all life's parade at your fingertips,' goes the spiel.) Pointedly, the set never gets turned on; it's seen but once again, reflecting flames from the fireplace, the focal point of simpler, less sophisticated times, and the values Hudson embodies.

Sirk takes this unlikely June-September romance and buffs it to the highest possible gloss, using his exquisite eye to enrich and deepen every frame. It's lush and sensuous - almost candified (at times gluttingly so) - and all but impossible to resist. When, at the close, a deer gambols up to nuzzle some snow off the windowpane in the mill Hudson has turned into his - their - home, it's an embarrassment of perfection. Never was Disney so magical.

All That Heaven Allows is a darker, more cynical film than Douglas Sirk's previously more conventional and successful Magnificent Obsession. Because of that film's attraction, Sirk was reunited with the two leads, Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. The result is a more potent story and much stronger social criticism. From the opening shot, in all its Technicolor glory, we see an overhead view of a small, self-contained American town, idyllic in its existence with all the right colors and characters in their proper place. However, look a little closer and you will see the glistening of the plastic leaves and matte paintings as backdrops. Sirk shows us the surface of a seemingly perfect society while slightly skewering it by also revealing its artificiality and decadent skeletal structure.

To continue this deconstruction of 1950s America, we see a newly made widow, Cary Scott, who is now resigned to living her life according to the pleasures and approval of her ungrateful children and her condescending circle of friends. On the surface, this appears to be nothing more than fodder lifted out of typical gossip magazines of the era, but Sirk with his wildly imaginative visual style gives us something more to chew on. It soon becomes clear, especially once she strikes up a romance with her muscular gardener (Rock Hudson), she is unable to truly break free from the bonds of social convention and have a true sense of understanding the world Ron gives to her.

Sirk won't even let Ron off the hook. As in Magnificent Obsession, none of the character are so wonderful and virtuous that we should completely enamor ourselves to them. He himself is rather forceful, unmovable in his intentions to wed Cary without any understanding of her situation. Simply put, they both have deeply embedded flaws to deal with, a most shocking and unfortunate conclusion Sirk flaunts in front of us.

If you are in the mood for a good old-fashioned melodrama, Douglas Sirk is certainly your most popular option and just might be the best. Unlike other films of its type and time like the enormously successful Peyton Place or A Summer Place, Sirk goes much deeper than anyone else. Often, his films require several viewings to get a true understanding of what he is saying about these people, this time and this place. One final note; the ending will seem to many modern audiences as simple contrivance by the studio to assure profits. However, whether or not it was what Sirk intended, looking closer may result in seeing exactly what he wants us to see: unbridled selfishness for various reasons by all types of people.

OK - Was "All That Heaven Allows" melodramatic? - Yes. Indeed. It was. And, was it corny-corny-corny? - Most definitely. And, was it clichéd to the max? - Yep. Right over the top.

And, yet, regardless of all of the above - Was "All That Heaven Allows" worth a view? Yep. That it was. In fact, it actually could be worth a second viewing, too. (If, of course, you're in the right frame of mind)

1955's "All That Heaven Allows" was a lush, Technicolor, Ross Hunter/Douglas Sirk production that (believe it, or not) actually made "humdrum" seem somehow interesting.

I don't know exactly what it is about this particular "suburban-life" soap opera that sets it apart from the rest of the junk - But, it certainly did manage to hold my attention for most of its 90-minute running time.

*Note* - This film certainly did contain its fair share of unintentionally laughable dialogue and situations, especially when it came to widow Cary Scott's interaction with her 2 snot-nosed, college-age children.

Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is a middle-aged, wealthy woman whose husband recently died. Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson) is Cary's younger, independent-minded landscape gardener. Ron reads Thoreau, respects nature, and values simplicity and honesty. Cary and Ron are attracted to each other. For Ron, marriage to Cary is an easy decision. But for Cary, the decision to marry Ron is harder. She must confront the disapproval of her grown children, and the disapproval of friends whose materialistic, country club values are inconsistent with the values of Thoreau.

In a town where people know each other's business, tongues wag. Feelings get hurt. Conflict erupts. The film's subdued lighting and vivid colors, combined with soft piano and velvety violin background music, create a tone that is sad and sentimental. Viewers are right to say that this Douglas Sirk directed film is a melodramatic soap opera.

Thinly veiled behind the simple plot, however, lies a profound message: "to thine own self be true". It is a message totally out of sync with 1950's America. Yet, the message would surface a decade later as the 1960's youth mantra: "do your own thing".

As an archetype, Ron seems too pure. And Cary's children and friends, shallow, selfish, vain, gossipy, and judgmental, are easy to dislike. This sharp dichotomy is somewhat unrealistic. But it gets the point across. And that point is a blistering indictment of 1950's American materialism and mindless conformity.

The film was thus ahead of its time. Despite its high technical quality, it was snubbed by the Oscars. In retrospect, "All That Heaven Allows" is superior to all five of the Oscar best picture nominees from that year. And its message is just as relevant now as it was fifty years ago.

German-born director Douglas Sirk made several melodramatic films in the 1950s that reflected Eisenhower-era sensibilities about morality and class structure within the flourish of his decidedly Baroque film-making approach. Dubbed trivially though appropriately as "women's pictures", they reflect a defining, often over-the-top style which has inspired other filmmakers, most obviously, Todd Haynes with his accomplished 2002 partial remake, "Far From Heaven". In my opinion, this 1955 film best represents Sirk's technique and consequently it is his best work. Fortunately, the Criterion Collection has seen fit to produce a DVD package commensurate with the quality of the film itself.

Similar to the later "Peyton Place", the plot is pure small-town soap opera, but the storyline is far more focused and nuanced than one would expect. Attractive fortyish widow Cary Scott is leading a sheltered life of unsolicited solitude with her beautiful home, circle of country club friends and two grown children away in college. She catches the eye of Ron Kirby, her young buck of a gardener, who turns out to be a non-materialistic, Thoreau-reading lover of nature who lives outside of town in a greenhouse in an only-in-Hollywood idyllic setting. Cary is definitely attracted to the much younger Ron, but her worries of what others may think prevents her from being too demonstrative about her feelings. Of course, their platonic relationship turns into forbidden love, at which point Cary tries to win the approval of her friends and children when she announces her engagement to Ron. In one way or the other, they all reject her decision, and she breaks off the engagement. The rest of the story works toward a hopeful but still tentative conclusion, which seems befitting of what audiences probably expected in the 1950s.

On the surface, it sounds as emotionally manipulative as a Danielle Steele romance novel. However, what fascinates me most about Sirk's film is how he sets up such an artificially-derived world and simultaneously shows how deeply committed he is in its credibility. The glorious Technicolor cinematography by the estimable Russell Metty (aided by "color consultant" William Fritzsche) adds to the hermetically sealed environment, but it's also due to how shots are meticulously composed, how the sets are placed, how people are dressed and how Frank Skinner's Rachmaninoff-inspired music heightens the melodrama. The right casting in such a movie, of course, is critical, and Sirk was smart to reunite Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson from their previous teaming in the even more melodramatic "Magnificent Obsession". With his steady, whispered tone and Adonis-like stature, the youthful Hudson is ideally cast as Ron, even if his relentless seriousness overemphasizes the character's innate nobility. What he does surprisingly well, however, is show how Ron's inability to compromise his principles is as much a barrier as the prejudices of Cary's friends and children.

Even better is the elegantly styled Wyman, who manages effectively to convey Cary's conflicting sensibilities and loneliness without seeming desperate. Well before she hardened her persona later with TV's "Falcon Crest", she exuded a girl-next-door likability that didn't really diminish as she matured. The rest of the cast is strong with particularly exceptional work by the women - Agnes Moorehead as Cary's supportive best friend Sara, Virginia Grey as Ron's close friend Alida, Jacqueline deWit as the venal gossip Mona, and Gloria Talbot as Cary's psychology-obsessed daughter Kay. The print transfer on the Criterion Collection DVD is pristine. There is also a nice extra with an edited 30-minute interview with Sirk from a 1979 BBC documentary, "Behind the Mirror".

There is nothing to add to all the other comments about Sirk's wonderful direction, color palette, camera placement, etc. Sumptuous visual story telling!

What compels repeated viewings, though, is Jane Wyman's amazing accomplishment here. Especially compared to Sirk's subsequent sudsy masterpiece featuring Lana Turner, "Imitation of Life."

Wyman was always good and always INTERESTING. She held the camera. No doubt about that. Was she a great actress? Did she ever get a script that let her PROVE she was? It's arguable.

But here I think she truly WAS. Line for line, this is fairly pedestrian material. ("I let others make my decisions for me.") Each scene, like a string of pearls, is well-constructed. The plot too contains emotional conflicts and arcs that sustain the whole and reward us in the end.

But the lines themselves? In lesser hands the entire enterprise would have laughably bombed.

The supporting cast is top-notch. They ALL know their way around a line. Especially Agnes Moorehead and Jacqueline de Wit.

Even the early Rock Hudson, another star not known for impressive acting chops, who later found his REAL niche in light comedies with Doris Day, in which he was terrific, shines here. What he's asked to do he does naturally, easily, sincerely and affectingly. His sexual heat, jaw-dropping good looks, that voice and, yes, manliness, were perhaps never before or afterward captured so effectively on screen.

But "All That Heaven Allows" is Jane Wyman's picture all the way, and she's heavenly in all of it.

Though everything she does looks unstudied and completely naturalistic, hers is a consummate technical display of film acting on the highest level.

Listen to her vocal inflections alone. Completely naturalistic. Except dramatically varied and supported by heightened emotion that is anything but "natural" and is all "art." (She could also sing, and sing well.)

Watch her movements. Same thing. All in character, not an ounce of phoniness. But so precise, economical and scaled for the camera that, again, you're watching the art of a well-trained professional performing at a high level.

Then, watch her amazing close-ups. You can read her every thought and emotion and reaction -- widely varying throughout the emotional plot arcs -- without her saying a word. Without an ounce of overplaying.

Her seeming simplicity here, as an artist, an actress, is so focused yet subtle that she pulls you in and holds you completely every moment she's on screen.

That, without being a natural or classic "beauty" like Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor, and without the aggressive showiness of actresses like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford or Katharine Hepburn.

The script doesn't offer Wyman the histrionic fireworks of more flamboyant roles given some other actresses.

But the layered richness and honesty of Wyman's performance here is the central achievement that keeps you returning to "All That Heaven Allows" again and again.

Yes, it's a great performance.

Call it a melodrama. At times, the music swells to remind us that so much is on the line. Call it a soap opera. The script hardly misses a chance to string along the emotions of the viewer. But "All That Heaven Allows" is more than that, if only for its message--a simple one, but one that is extremely important: to thine own self be true.

This story of romance would be worthwhile watching only for this lesson, but it offers more. The sets are beautiful. The direction is solid. Jane Wyman, who stars as Cary Scott, is convincing as the confused woman who loves a younger man but lacks the strength to follow her feelings. Rock Hudson plays the object of her affections--a man of principles who won't compromise his values. Gloria Talbott, who plays Cary's daughter, has a screen presence that, perhaps, could have been utilized more. Likewise, Agnes Moorehead as Cary's friend, Sara Warren.

This is not a great film, but it represents its era very well, in terms of quality and theme.

"All That Heaven Allows" is one of Douglas Sirk's most popular and influential films. It's not hard to see why. The central theme is one that will always be relevant, no matter what the decade. There will always be many who will resonate to the quest for freedom when finding their own lives constrictive and dissatisfying. Throughout time society's pressure to conform has caused much emotional upheaval in many a life, but the 1950's seems to have been a decade of a particularly ruthless conservatism. This social climate produced the McCarthy witch hunts, as well as some of Hollywoods finest movies, finally being avenged by the birth of rock 'n roll.

The theme of the constraints of society and the suffering it causes is naturally one that is particularly close to gay people. Two gay film makers were so affected by "All That Heaven Allows" that they remade it with their own particular perspectives. Fassbinder increases the age difference between the older woman and her younger lover and makes things even more extreme by giving them vastly different cultural and social backgrounds. Todd Haynes manages to pull of the miraculous feat of recreating the 1950's Sirk style and yet with contemporary sensibilities. "Fear Eats the Soul" and "Far From Heaven" stand on their own in their excellence, while both acknowledging the huge influence Sirk and "All That Heaven Allows" had upon them.

"All that Heaven Allows" was made the very same year as "Rebel Without a Cause" The rebellion in question in "Rebel without a Cause" is that of youth with all its pain, not to mention its glamour embodied by luminaries James Dean and Natalie Wood. Nicholas Ray created a truly iconic film of teenage rebellion against repressive parents and society as a whole. Sirk's film is in a way more daring. Despite the glossy sheen in which he has wrapped this work, the story is in fact the rebellion of a widow against her repressive children and the society to which she belongs. It makes a perfect companion piece to Sirk's "There's Always Tomorrow" which essays the unhappiness of a man (Fred Macmurray), who despite having achieved all society has expected of him, finds his life meaningless. There too his children are depicted as egoistic, uncaring and ungrateful. Both films are a devastating attack on family life and the social mores of the 50's. Sadly "There's Always Tomorrow" remains Sirk's most underrated and unseen film.

As a young man, Sirk read Thoreau and was enthralled. He insisted on including a scene in which "Walden" is read and quoted in "All That Heaven Allows". Thoreau's message " If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer" is central to the movie and to Sirk's work as a whole.

Emerson's "to thine own self be true" is also quoted in the movie and has a particular poignancy as far as Sirk's career goes. A gifted intellectual with a sense of cinema shared by few, Sirk should surely have been destined to make greater films. When he signed to Universal thereby agreeing to make scripts that often bordered on the insulting, it could have been a case of selling out. The miracle of Sirk's work is that through it all, poor scripts and often second rate actors, he was always true to himself in expressing his views, while toeing the studio line and in fact making them a lot of money. Within the soppy, gorgeously presented melodramas, his cutting criticism of American society is always present. Like Milos Forman and Fritz Lang, the eye of the foreigner often has a distinct clarity and objectivity.

The leads in "All that Heaven Allows" were taken straight from Sirk's wildly successful "Magnificent Obsession". Jane Wyman gives an outstanding performance compared to "Obesession", while Hudson now a star, fails to fulfill the promise he shows in "Obsession". Here already his limitations are pretty evident. While seldom really awful, he would be seldom be really good. Agnes Moorehead again gives terrific support and again the legendary cameraman Russell Metty works his magic.

Heavenly.

All That Heaven Allows is a piece of cinema romance as slick as it comes from Douglas Sirk who is one of the best directors for these films. For its time it was a daring film involving the younger man with an older woman. But couples like that from Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore should be inspired by this film.

The film opens with Jane Wyman as a recent and well provided for widow with grown children Gloria Talbott and William Reynolds. They're all in favor of mother getting married again, they've even got a husband in mind for her, attentive neighbor Conrad Nagel from their country club set.

But when she announces that she'd like to marry their gardener, Rock Hudson, this scandalizes everyone in their very WASPy and respectable suburban town.

Rock's a rather unusual gardener however. A Korean War veteran who did attend agricultural college at one point, he's developed a Thoreau like philosophy of life, he even has his own Walden Pond where he keeps the tree nursery and spends all his time. He's even fixed up the old mill on the place as a honeymoon cottage.

After such fare on television as suburban housewives, stuff like All That Heaven Allows is pretty tame and pretty dated. Still the players are earnest and sincere and it's a film where you can for once see Agnes Moorehead as a nice lady as Wyman's best friend and supporter.

I'll simply align myself with the other commentators who are bowled over by this Sirkfest's vibrant colors, use of lush fake-Liszt and Rachmaninoff, and surprising willingness to attack materialistic '50s values (in this last instance, the film's hardly dated a bit). True, the central romance isn't always convincing -- what does Ron see in Carrie, anyway? -- and the film has to oversimplify its characters to make its points. Carrie's daughter, a social-working bobby-soxer who quotes Freud and wears unflattering glasses, is meant to be something of a joke (until she sheds some feminine tears and suddenly becomes sympathetic); while Carrie's older suitor, underplayed by Conrad Nagel, is looked on as less than a desirable man simply because he limits himself to one drink. (In common with many films from this period, an awful lot of liquor is consumed.) Too, there's an impossibly melodramatic third act, where the circumstances of Ron's accident are howlingly implausible. Nice, though, that the always-reliable Agnes Moorehead plays a socialite who's not as shallow as she first seems, and that Wyman gets to model some attractive '50s fashions. Also note the sumptuous midcentury interiors -- whether the happy couple ends up living in Wyman's suburban mansion or Hudson's renovated barn, I want to live in them both.

Amazingly fantastic film that I went gaga over today. I had never seen any of Douglas Sirk's movies up til today, and boy, was "All That Heaven Allows" a great introduction! The film follows the romance of Cary (played by Jane Wyman) and Ron (Rock Hudson). Cary is a well-off widower who somehow falls in love with her gardener much to her surprise. The problem that she has to overcome of course, is What Will The Neighbors Think? Yes, boys and girls, we have the classic 50's scandal. An older woman being with a younger man!! OK, let it be known that I LOVED this movie. Jane Wyman is fantastic here, and Rock Hudson? Well, what can I say? I can fully understand why he was considered a hug heartthrob in his day. Sure the plot is totally overblown and melodramatic, but I don't care, because Wyman and Hudson make it work so well, and have so much chemistry together.

It's so easy to watch this film and see how much Sirk influenced other directors, even though he was quite ridiculed for the same influences, his camera work, and especially his lighting choices you can see in a myriad of other movies since (see of course, the ultimate salute to him, Far From Heaven as an excellent example).

A simply fantastic piece of film-making here!

It's 1950s small town America and rich society widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) has fallen in love with her gardener Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), but can the gossipy town handle it? This beautifully filmed classic, directed by Douglas Sirk, is so touching. And even though it's considered a melodrama (and at times a bit syrupy--just watch for Bambi!) there is a deeper meaning underneath all that Technicolor. Listen for the Thoreau quote that Cary reads when she and Ron visit his friends, Mick and Alida Anderson. That's the whole lesson of the film summed up right there.

Added note: There's a classic line that Wyman says to Hudson in the car when he says that she should not let others influence her decisions, like his friend Mick, who had to learn how to be a man. She responds with "You want me to be a man." Then he says, "Well, just in that one way." It's funny now in retrospect!

An upper-class widow (Jane Wyman) falls in love with a much younger, down-to-earth nurseryman (Rock Hudson), much to the disapproval of her children and criticism of her country club peers.

Today (2013) we live in the world of cougars and a very laissez-faire attitude to relationships and sexuality. For the most part we do not care who sleeps with who, who lives with who, and whatnot. Of course, not long ago, it was taboo to be openly gay or sometimes even to embrace cohabitation.

In 1955, what were the standards? Apparently even to date a younger man was frowned upon. They did not live together or have an intimate relationship... and yet Cary's children practically disown her. Why? Perhaps it could be more the class issue than the age issue, but regardless it comes across as silly by today's standards, considering the children are grown and this is not their business.

The film's use of color is impressive. In some ways it reminds one of "Black Narcissus" (1947), though the color palette makes the characters and backgrounds seem almost like stained glass. Cinematographer Russell Metty had a long career, dating back to the 1920s and earning an Oscar in 1960 for "Spartacus". Perhaps he should have received an award here.

In this film, Rock Hudson is shown as "an object" or "a spectacle", somewhat reversing traditional gender roles. This, of course, is quite intentional, as it would hardly be taboo for an older man to pursue a younger woman. But in some ways it is more than age, with his very body being something to admire, not a common male trait. (Cary's son flatly says that he is nothing but "muscles".)

Much can be said about the replacement of a lost love with television and what the film was trying to say with this. Television was still a relatively new medium at the time, so in some ways this is prescient in how it suggests that we could fill our lives with such a thing.

The Criterion commentary discusses whether or not Sirk's approach was "Brechtian" and how his shots were largely claustrophobic. Much of the discussion is helpful, though they do tend to get a bit too academic at times, seeing symbolism where it likely is not. And there is a long tangent on trying to define "melodrama" and whether or not it is a gendered term.

'All That Heaven Allows' is the first Douglas Sirk film that I have ever seen and it only took me one viewing of this film to see how much of a master technician Sirk was. This film is a social commentary on the fickle nature and the hypocrisy of life in the suburban small towns of post war 1950s America. But Sirk critiques this society not just with the story, but also with his visuals.

The film starts with the camera suspended in the air close to the tower clock of the town. Slowly the camera pans sideways to show us this supposedly idealistic version of the perfect American suburban locality. Similar to Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 'A Letter to Three Wives', 'All That Heaven Allows' explores the grim reality of the 'happy' life in post WW2 suburban America. This society is enveloped by a suffocating law of conformity. One is supposed to know his/her role and carry it out accordingly. This film shows the rigid hypocrisy that lied underneath the ideal exterior of this society which made life hell for some people and especially women. Cary, our protagonist is a widow. So she has to accept the fact that she can't have fun anymore and will have to restrict her life to what's on television and somewhat wither away. If she tries to defy these conventions and give love another chance by falling in love with a younger man, she will be on the receiving end of judgement. The way Cary's kids Ned and Kay behave actually adds a layer of complexity to the story. They are also trapped in this rigid, non-liberal society(although Kay thinks otherwise), however they don't feel the need to change. They will approve of it if their mother remarries and the new husband is nothing but a duplicate of their father and stands for everything that he stood for, but they will not accept it if Cary's lover turns out to be a younger, more liberal individual who is different to their father. The character of Ron represents the change that was on the verge of taking place in American society. He is the type of person who would have been called a hippie only about a decade later.

What makes this film a masterpiece is the direction of the film and style of storytelling, more than the story. Sirk utilises technicolor in the most artistic way. The film looks vibrant. There are shots that are so beautiful to look at that they can be easily framed and hung on the wall. Sirk uses a harsh blue artificial light in the film to signify the ominous and constant presence of societal judgements and oppression. The blue light keeps appearing in the film to riddle Cary with doubts and hesitations. Red is used as the colour that signifies a sense of happiness and freedom. Sirk plays around with these and other colours quite immensely. This incessant use of vibrant colours can be easily seen as an influence on Rainer Werner Fassbinder's films. His 'Ali:Fear Eats the Soul' is a bit of a tangential remake of 'All That Heaven Allows'. There are also a number of different techniques used in 'All That Heaven Allows' to visually give the impression of characters trapped in a particular frame. Sirk uses the reflective nature of mirrors or the reflection of a character on the limited space of a television screen or in other cases window bars and grills to show characters trapped in a thematic sense in this uptight suffocating societal prison. The precise and meticulous blocking of actors is also used extensively to visually express certain changes in themes or tones.

Jane Wyman gives a performance which is layered and complex. She uses her facial expressions a lot to signify a change in her mood. It is not possible for the viewer to not care for her and her plight. Rock Hudson exudes masculine charm and appeal. He is handsome, charismatic and has a commanding gentlemanly presence which makes it quite believable that Cary will be smitten by Hudson's character Ron and want to be with him.

Yes an argument can be made that certain convenient adjustments are made in the screenplay to arrive at an ending which would have been acceptable for the audience of the time, but personally I didn't have a problem with these adjustments because of the way Sirk kept using artistic visual flair to execute them. This is genuinely a masterpiece rich with feelings, emotions, social commentary and visual artistry. An absolute must-watch.

I just saw this film for the first time on TCM last night. I was struck by the similarity to "Far From Heaven" which I loved. I kept saying to myself, "This is so corny!!!" Yet I couldn't turn it off.

Part of my admiration came from looking at the movie. It is simply dazzling. The brilliant colors, shadows, reflections, etc., are enough to keep you watching. However, that's not all.

I liked the story. I too (like others who have written here) thought that the story was ahead of its time. The 50's were all about conformity. Doesn't anybody remember McCarthyism? Here is a woman who is following her emotions and bucking the social system. That is amazing. A woman of the upper class who would even look at a gardener as a person is unusual. I liked Jane Wyman (Cary). She didn't show passion, but she communicated deep feelings. I felt her reserved manner was in character. I liked her dignity and her plain way of speaking. She was a genuine person. It's unfortunate that she felt she had to give up her romance with Ron (Rock Hudson) for the sake of her children. Sheesh. I knew how that was going to turn out. The ending was....well....yikes, the deer!!! Still, I'm glad the lovers ended up together. (I was brokenhearted at the end of "Far From Heaven"!!) And as for Rock Hudson....what a hunk! There was quite a bit of jealousy among Wyman's female friends for obvious reasons!

Wonderful example of Sirk's famous use of reflections and transparencies. Watch for this accomplished, smooth stylist's wonderful gliding camera's use of windows, mirrors, etc., including the famous reflection of Jane Wyman's lonely, alienated face in the television set that her short-sighted children have given her for Christmas, as her only proper companion (and imprisoner), contrasted with the large picture window at Rock Hudson's cabin, bringing in the liberating light of a re-union with nature (and true love), an escape from and transcendence of the stifling conformity and conventionality of her upper-middle class suburb set.

All this in a sentimental glossy Ross Hunter production makes for beautiful irony.

This is one of the most wonderful romantic movies of all time. I never get tired of it. Rock Hudson is at his most stunning in this movie, then again when Isn't he? I think I've watched this movie a hundred times since we bought it and each time the first Barn Scene is the most wonderful. The whole movie is great, but there is something about that barn scene that just does it for me. Rock is so devastatingly gorgeous and the way he looks at Jane in that scene is almost scary how intense it is. It takes my breath away. Sirk did a fantastic job casting and directing. I recommend this to anyone who's a romantic at heart because he's just so great. As you might have already been able to tell I'm a Rock Hudson addict. He's the most wonderful thing ever and this movie sends chills of romantic ideas down your spine, but not in the gross way todays movies do. No sex, no over done love scenes. Just love at its most pure. You can feel their love for one another through the screen just in the way they talk to each other and that is true love. Great, Great, Great movie.

Jane Wyman gives a winsome and luminous performance in this achingly beautiful Douglas Sirk weepie.

Wyman plays a dutiful 1950s widow, going through the motions in a straight-laced, stifling suburb. Her children are college age and live away from home; her life has settled into a boring routine. She falls for gardener Rock Hudson, who not only is younger than her but also is (GASP!) poorer. Marriage to him would mean facing the harsh criticism of the snobbish New England society to which she belongs -- even her children oppose the match. But Wyman's character harbors a strong-willed spirit which bristles at the conventions forced upon her.

If this premise sounds familiar, it should -- Todd Haynes borrowed it for his homage to Sirk's melodramas, "Far From Heaven" (2002). In that film, he reexamined Sirk's critique of mainstream upper middle class America and the banality forced upon anyone who wishes to belong to that class. Haynes's film is edgier than Sirk's -- a more liberated culture allowed him to explore racism and homophobia in addition to class barriers. But Sirk's film is no less powerful or devastating despite the limitations placed upon it.

In my mind, Sirk held a unique place among film directors. He made art out of pure melodrama, something not many could do. The same stories filmed by other directors would be easy to dismiss as cornball entertainment -- but it's not so easy to dismiss Sirk. He attacked conventions that at the time were taken for granted as being desirable for anyone wanting to live the American dream; but his attacks, if not his films, were subtle, and he made his movies for the very audience at whom he was aiming his criticism.

No other Sirk film matches "All That Heaven Allows" for sheer craftsmanship, not even the wildly feverish "Written on the Wind," released a year later. And Jane Wyman was a perfect Sirk heroine; she was able to deftly navigate the cornball elements and create a character who you both believe in and care deeply for.

Grade: A+

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.

First, the directing is great. The lighting, the colors, it all brings a fake, yet cosy feeling to the movie, like that from an Christmas card. I actually liked it, and was reminded of Micheal Powells films. The acting is good, except in the emotional parts where the melodrama goes a little overboard. I usually tolerat this in older movies. Not here. The story and the melodrama just played out to conveniently, and even though the subject was handled nicely, i never felt quite convinced. The characters were to sharply drawn. Especially Ron, who never felt very believable.

In hindsight the movie does feel better, but i was pretty irked during its running time, and the ending shot of the dear sure didn't help.