☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
All That Heaven Allows (1955) -- D. Sirk
The scope of this
melodrama may seem small -- after all it
centers exclusively on rich widow Jane Wyman and her loneliness and then love
for a younger blue-collar man, Rock Hudson -- but Douglas Sirk still brings the
strings and sweeps us from joy to tears. And who could miss the explicit
critique of American society here? From the keeping up with the Jones mentality
and its wicked gossip to the bedrock values underlying the need to succeed
financially, Sirk rejects them all. Hudson is adamantly his own man, not
interested in money or social status, and he is younger, freer, and therefore
rejected by Wyman's family and bitchy circle.
Fassbinder remade this in Germany using an inter-racial relationship and
an even wider age gap, but of course he was able to do explicitly what Sirk
could only do more subtly (with good use of framing, colored lighting, and
shadows to underscore his themes). Like
"Imitation of Life" and "Written on the Wind", this is a
much more cutting film than 1950s audiences may have realized.
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