Themes: Class Differences, Star-Crossed Lovers, Age Disparity Romance
Main Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey
Release Year: 1955
Country: US
Run Time: 89 minutes
Plot
One of director Douglas Sirk's best and most successful romantic soapers of the 1950s, All That Heaven Allows is predicated on a May-December romance. The difference here is that the woman, attractive widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), is considerably older than the man, handsome gardener-landscaper Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson). Sirk builds up sympathy for Cary by showing how empty her life has been since her husband's death, even suggesting that the marriage itself was no picnic. Throwing conventionial behavior to the winds and facing social ostracism, Cary pursues her romance with Ron, who is unjustly perceived as a fortune-hunter by Cary's friends and family--especially her priggish son Ned (William Reynolds). Amusingly, Conrad Nagel was to have had a much larger part as Harvey, an elderly widower who carries a torch for Cary, but his role was trimmed down during previews when audiences disapproved of an implicit romance between a sixtyish man and a fortysomething woman! All That Heaven Allows was remade by unabashed Douglas Sirk admirer Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Ali--Fear Eats the Soul (1974), in which the age gap between hero and heroine was even wider. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Douglas Sirk's stylized romantic melodrama is one of the most fascinating of his films and the most thoroughgoing in its critique of American middle-class values. Its simple story concerns a romance between a 40-ish widow, Jane Wyman, and her young gardener, Rock Hudson, which scandalizes her social circle in a small New England town. "Sirk has made the tenderest films I know, they are the films of someone who loves people and doesn't despise them as we do," wrote R.W. Fassbinder about the director who was his primary influence. Sirk, a German immigrant who preferred to work in the frequently disdained genre of the "woman's picture," was able to imbue shopworn soap operas of trapped and oppressed women with a unique blend of humanism, social comment, and subterranean visual irony. Here, he points up the petty intolerance of the friends and grown children of a lonely widow, who are disturbed by the notion that she should still need love and sexual fulfillment. In a scene featuring the television as fetish object, Sirk deftly underlines the emptiness that he found in the rituals of American society. The director's characteristic use of mirrors, doorways, and various architectural details to frame compositions implies both limits of the world of his characters and the artifice of his narrative. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Alexander Golitzen - Art Director, Eric Orbom - Art Director, Bill Thomas - Costume Designer, Joseph E. Kenny - First Assistant Director, Douglas Sirk - Director, Fred Baratta - Editor, Frank Gross - Editor, Joseph E. Gershenson - Composer (Music Score), Frank Skinner - Composer (Music Score), Joseph E. Gershenson - Musical Direction/Supervision, Bud Westmore - Makeup, Russell Metty - Cinematographer, Ross Hunter - Producer, Russell A. Gausman - Set Designer, Julia Heron - Set Designer, Leslie I. Carey - Sound/Sound Designer, Joe Lapis - Sound/Sound Designer, Peggy Fenwick - Screenwriter, Edna Lee - Short Story Author, Harry Lee - Short Story Author
All That Heaven Allows (1955) is a romancefeature film starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in a tale about a well-to-do widow and a younger landscape designer falling in love. The screenplay was written by Peg Fenwick based upon a story by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee. The film was directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Ross Hunter.
In 1995, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. All That Heaven Allows has been broadcast on American television and is available in VHS and DVD format.
Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is an affluent widow in suburban New England, whose social life involves her country club peers, college-age children, and a couple of men vying for her affection.
She becomes interested in Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), her family's gardener and a down-to-earth, younger man. Ron is content with his simple life outside of judgmental society, and the two fall in love. Ron introduces her to other people who have no need for wealth and status, and she responds positively. Cary accepts his proposal for marriage, but becomes distressed when her friends and children look down upon and reject her for this socially-unacceptable marriage. Cary breaks off the marriage when her children threaten to abandon her. Both she and Ron continue their separate lives in sorrow.
As Cary's social life returns to its original state, she notices other women becoming engaged and living lives of happiness. Even her own children are soon to leave the family home. Cary realizes that she is ready to defy social norms and commit to loving Ron. She rushes to his side when he has a life-threatening accident, telling him that she has come home.
Universal-International Pictures wanted to follow up on the pairing of Wyman and Hudson from Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession (1954). Sirk found the screenplay for All That Heaven Allows "rather impossible" but was able to restructure it and use the big budget to film and edit the work exactly the way he wanted.[citation needed]
Title
The title may have been taken from the poem "Love and Life" by the Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), the last stanza of which reads:
Bosley Crowther generally panned the film and commented in the New York Times of February 29, 1956: "The script was obviously written to bring [Wyman] and Mr. Hudson, who made a popular twosome in the Magnificent Obsession, together again. Solid and sensible drama plainly had to give way to outright emotional bulldozing and a paving of easy clichés."[2]
Many theorists view the film as a social critique of the conformity obsessed 1950s.
Awards and honors
In 1995, All That Heaven Allows was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Zwei Genies (1934) • Das Mädchen vom Moorhof (1935) • Der Eingebildete Kranke (1935) • Dreimal Ehe (1935) • April, April! (1935) • Stützen der Gesellschaft (1935) • La Chanson du souvenir (1936) • t was een april (1936) • Schlußakkord Das Hofkonzert (1936) • Das Hofkonzert (1936) • Zu neuen Ufern (1936) • Zu neuen Ufern (1937) • La Habanera (1937) • Accord final (1938) • Boefje (1939)
1940s
Hitler's Madman (1943) • Summer Storm (1944) • A Scandal in Paris (1946) • Lured (1947) • Sleep, My Love (1948) • Shockproof (1949) • Slightly French (1949)
