All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Taboos are like rules. They may be there for good reasons. Or not. Like rules, they need to be broken when a higher principle holds.

Sirk tackles the stifling taboos of social convention. Unlike art house filmmakers, he hides his serious message (and serious filmmaking) within mainstream formats. It is no wonder he can count modern directors such as Tarantino among his admirers.

All That Heaven Allows swells with sensuous, expressionistic pools of colour. Meticulous, highly embellished mise-en-scene. Simplified dialogue, tear-jerker characters. But most of all it plays to both the mainstream element it vilifies and the libertarian whose philosophy it upholds.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Cary (Jane Wyman) is an attractive widow. Like middle-aged Stepford Wives, her local community decrees that her position suits her for nothing more than sexless union with a nice elderly gentleman. Or life in front of a television set. But Cary falls passionately in love with a young gardener.

Rock Hudson is the strong silent male. But when he has something to say, it is worth saying. He has found contentment in a wholesome, simple life. His life with nature, growing and pruning trees, has become internalised.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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This would sound the stuff of whimsy were it not backed up with sincerity, great acting and the fact that Ron Kirby (Hudson) has become a believable role model for his best mate. Through Kirby, the film becomes a paean to the American dream of self-determination that many Americans have never learnt how to aspire to. A Dream submerged by capitalism, social mores or religious values. The stifled dream becomes a melancholy lament. A dramatisation of women’s sexuality. A dilemma from which there is no escape.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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But Sirk does realise mainstream audiences (and no doubt his sponsors) will not like such a message. So he makes the gossiping community not only realistic but sympathetic. Cary’s blackmailing children are adorable – who could not side with them? And isn’t a woman’s place to put her children and the community first (even if they don’t give that much of a damn)?

Serious filmgoers may not find the ending, which relies too much on coincidence, believable. But as Sirk himself once pointed out, you’re not meant to. It’s tacked on. A final irony. The story as society would have us live it. The unrealisable, incomplete, substitute. The opiate promoted through our television sets.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Douglas Sirk work was only recognised critically when he abandoned America, unable to adapt to its lifestyle. He was at the height of his commercial success. Championed by Godard and Cahiers du Cinema, and then in the Seventies by English-speaking critics, his importance gradually dawned. Todd Haynes’ tribute, Far From Heaven, reawakened both the style and structure of All That Heaven Allows and possibly led to wider acknowledgement of Sirk’s great contribution to cinema. Yet Sirk’s balancing act is a hard act to follow, even if the visual technique can be copied. In The Hours, we saw the tradition-fettered American woman of that same period, but that woman gained our respect through a superhuman decision. Sirk’s heroines are merely human.

Sirk was a man ahead of his time who ultimately only found true solace in teaching. The children in All That Heaven Allows are not ‘a new generation’ but learn only how to perpetuate tradition and repression. Sirk’s legacy, in films such as this, yearns for a new generation of understanding. In this, it is far more than just one of the great American films of the Fifties.

Eye For Film

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is pursued by distinguished elderly gentlemen but finds herself attracted to her Adonis-like pruning gardener, the much younger Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), who enchants her with his simplistic love of nature and indifference toward materialism. The abandoned mill in upstate New York where rugged Ron chooses to make his picturesque home, eventually the matrimonial home, is presented as an idyllic paradise with frolicking deer. Correspondingly Cary lives in a large house filled with the useless trappings of the times… even a television set is looming on the horizon for her to pass through her twilight years.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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The inner depth of Ron’s character is conveyed through a close friend, describing him with heroic and earthy qualities that influence others. He aptly has little patience for her stuffy, catty, socialite Country Club friends and can never seem to bend from his principles. Cary has more trouble applying these lofty values to herself when her admonishing, grown children disapprove of her selection of a new husband. Being poorly influenced she impulsively calls off her engagement to Ron. The zenith point in the film is where Cary learns enough of herself to allow her own emotions to champion over idle gossip and be the final judge of her personal future. She finds the reasons behind her dismissal of the marriage as fleeting as her children’s whims.

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Sirk uses obvious techniques of character and plot development yet extreme subtlety to imbue his story’s depth always sustaining the clean polished appearance of the film. Cary’s social circles are seemingly breaking every infraction of decency with snide viper-tongued backstabbing to boorish wolf-like advances. Ron’s friends on the other hand, are simple, warm and the smiling and laughing never stops when their party gathering transpires. Either as a glorified soap opera or a witty critique on social stigma, Sirk achieves a high degree of success on both levels. One of the few films, both my wife and I can enjoy together… for totally different reasons.

Criterion have done it again: a perfect DVD in image, film and extras. This is another strong contender for a must-have category for any DVD collector.

Gary W. Tooze, DVDBeaver

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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Disc Features:
- New widescreen digital transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions
- A half hour of excerpts from Behind the Mirror: A Profile of Douglas Sirk, a 1979 BBC documentary featuring rare interview footage with the director
- “Imitation of Life: On the Films on Douglas Sirk”: an illustrated essay by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- A collection of vintage lobby cards and production stills
- Original theatrical trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
- PLUS: Exclusive liner notes by noted film theorist Laura Mulvey

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All That Heaven Allows (1955) [The Criterion Collection #095]

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