Sick Product of a Sick System

People are voting emotionally.

Best movie ever!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

An auteur maudit of his time, German émigré Douglas Sirk's renown has been considerably reappraised with much admiration for his trademark disposition of light and color, the swelling watchability sublimated from its saccharine source material, aka. the often derogated melodrama, and affecting emotional flux elicited from his sharply tricked-out players (Rock Hudson is among the staple). Sirk's second Wyman-Hudson vehicle, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, is a lean, Technicolor-fueled, frippery-free, love-overcoming-moral-prejudice romantic drama, a middle-class suburban widow Cary Scott (Wyman) gallantly accepts the marriage proposal from her much younger boyfriend Ron Kirby (Hudson), who is hailed from a different class bracket and has no ambition in pursuing affluence. What transpires in the wake of her decision trenchantly discloses the selfishness, snobbery, myopia and hypocrisy inherently pertaining to the objectionable mindset of small-town bourgeoisie. On paper, the story sounds platitudinous, but Sirk's wow factor is, as always, his divine composition of the palette and setting, everything is undergone through a minutely preparatory process, from the impeccable cosmetic furnishing and elegant garbs of its dramatis personae, to its almost storybook environs, however, to counterpoise the richness on one's eyes, Sirk is quite self-aware of not overreaching himself, ergo, the plot pans out in a reductive but expressively accurate manner, sans devious routes, to sustain a vigorous lifeline that magically keeps a spectator rapt. It goes without saying this approach often lives and dies with the performers, and in this case, it totally hits the bull-eye. Jane Wyman is a screen paragon who can yoke unperturbed grace with understated determination in a pinch, and step by step, Cary's liberation from those fetters chained to a lonesome widow is limned through her pitch-perfect, layered felicity that it hits every right spot to accompany a viewer's mirrored, visceral journey. Rock Hudson, a quintessential specimen of American masculinity and good looks, aptly elicits Ron's larger-than-life symbol of perfection but at the same time, conveys his vulnerability and misery with pinpricks of impatience and disappointment, which injects a more personal note to the character. As regards the peripheral roles, Gloria Talbott and William Reynolds, who play Cary's college-age children, both stoutly take it to themselves as the cardinal negative force impeding their mother's new romance, with the former's talk-the-talk, walk-the-walk turnabout and the latter's sheer self-seeking callousness, god bless our offspring. But one's heart easily goes with a solicitous Agnes Moorehead, who is always a pleasant sight as Cary's matter-of-fact confidant and an effulgent Virginia Grey, radiating warmth even if she is not necessarily needed to do so. Lastly, the purportedly compromised ending, stank with the inimical Catholic precept that one must suffer (both physically and mentally) plenty before finally gaining the reward, comes off as a fly in the ointment to wring a quasi-tearjerking effect, nonetheless, as vouched by Liszt's timelessly enchanting Consolation No. 3 in the beginning, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS oozes a vintage vitality in its most luscious taste, isn't that wonderful?

after so many time, it is a challenge to define the source of seduction for this real beautiful film. sure, many explanations are reasonable. the romanticism, the performances, the delicate love story against everything, few scenes who are more than magnificent, the basic truths in the right light. but this is only the first step for admire a drama about the need to be yourself. about the essence of happiness. and about the fight for it. short, a film who represents a precious experience.

A little soapy. A little sudsy. But it's first class spa quality soap and suds! This is not as good as "Magnificent Obsession", which preceded it, but it's still top notch in terms of production values and acting. The one thing that the film suffers from is the different world we live in today. Small towns are still small towns, but the almost town-wide peeping into Jane Wyman's life would be so much less today than it was back in 1955. Nevertheless, it's a fairly good story if you put it in perspective of its era.For the most part, the critical players here do fairly nicely. Jane Wyman was too young for the part as the "older woman", but she actually pulls it off quite well. Rock Hudson is just fine as the younger love interest. Agnes Moorehead is sort of torn between a character with a heart, but still a town gossip...but she handles it well. Conrad Nagel does nicely as an older love interest, although it's a small (though critical part). Virginia Grey is quite good as Wyman's friend...an underestimate character actress in my view. Gloria Talbott was decent as the daughter, although most will perhaps remember her more as an early television actress. I can't quite decide if William Reynolds, as the son, was just a lousy actor or if he was directed poorly...but his performance is totally unconvincing. Donald Curtis as a letch...thumbs down.If you can only watch one, opt for "Magnificent Obsessions", but this is a fairly good film with a relatively interesting story.

It might not be a masterpiece of visual storytelling - most of it comes from plot and acting - but emotionally it's top notch, especially in the second half the film gains a seemingly unstoppable momentum. This being said it's certainly a nice-looking film with vibrant colors and surprisingly much shadow work that in films from this period one usually only sees in film noirs (which most of the time were in black and white). But one memorable visual cue is Cary's (Jane Wyman) reflection in the TV set (a gift from her children) which is effectively used as it traps her into a box and recalls what Cary's daughter said earlier about wives in Ancient Egypt getting put into a tomb together with their deceased husbands. Funnily in RWF's 'Ali: Fear Eats the Soul' the son kicks in the mother's TV set when she introduces the children to the man she intends to marry.Amidst all the melodrama there also is much humor, even up to the last frame with the deer in the window, though none of it suggested to me that Sirk was just a hipster who never actually meant anything what he put on screen, he just keeps things humorous, so I thought the giggles in the theater were mostly justified.Sirk, who made melodramas for Universal, where most films of its ilk eventually could probably be seen as confirming to consumerism and generally to what might be called the "American way of life", didn't subscribe to those things. Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson) is an outsider who found his own way in 50's America and Cary eventually follows him, mostly for his sake, but she is attracted to his way of life as well. Not to mention that most of Cary's friends and her children are pretty much exemplary Americans in theory, yet what shines the brightest in the film is their ignorance, their selfishness, and their compulsion to follow the herd by reacting the way they think they are supposed to react out of fear not to fit in. Those are probably not the first things one thinks of when one is invested in the romance that concludes with an emotionally satisfying happy ending. I'm not sure that this makes Sirk's work a prime example of subversive cinema, but likely a prime example of subversive works produced within the studio system.When Cary picked up Henry David Thoreau's book Walden my eyes almost fell out of my skull, just two days ago 'Upstream Color' brought the book to my attention and now again it was an important part of a film that again didn't fail to quote from it.I liked most of what I have seen from Sirk and I wouldn't say that 'All That Heaven Allows' is necessarily his crowning achievement but I had nothing to complain about and it's certainly up there with his best work, it sure is an excellent film and representative of Sirk's oeuvre at large.