NFR Project: 'All That Heaven Allows' (1955)

NFR Project: “All That Heaven Allows”

Dir: Douglas Sirk

Scr: Peg Fenwick

Pho: Russell Metty

Ed: Frank Gross

Premiere: Dec. 25, 1955

89 min.

Douglas Sirk (1897-1907) was a subversive. He was a pacifist who was harassed for his beliefs during World War I. He fled Germany with his Jewish wife in 1937. In Hollywood, he continued the directing career he had begun in Germany, specializing in the making of “women’s pictures.” He used these emotional melodramas as vehicles for his own anti-Establishment thinking.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in All That Heaven Allows, which features a female protagonist lost in and subject to a male- and affluence-dominated society. She is Cary Scott (Jane Wyman, age 38), a well-off and relatively young widow with two grown children. She has centered her life around their weekend visits.

In the film’s beginning, she finally returns to society in a red dress (which her children don’t think is appropriate) via a dance at the local country club. There, two different men hit on her, swooping down on her confused self, seeking to “claim” her off the singles market. She rejects their overtures.

She incidentally meets young Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson, age 29), a gardener who has trimmed her trees for the past three years, spring and fall. A spark ignites between them, and soon Ron proposes to her. She accepts – but then quickly finds out that a) everyone in town is gossiping about her seemingly inappropriate relationship with a younger and poorer man and b) her children declare that they will disown her if she goes through with it. Most of all, the two seem outraged that she would leave their ancestral home and go live with Ron in a converted millhouse. Succumbing to societal and family pressure, she breaks up with Ron.

Then, that Christmas, her children gleefully tell her they are leaving home, due to impending marriage and work. They buy her a TV to distract her from her now-empty life. They suggest she sell the house after all. Realizing that her children are insensitive monsters, Cary flees back to Ron’s side. He has been injured in a fall, so she takes up a seat beside him. Slowly, he comes to consciousness. “Cary, you’ve come home,” he says. “Yes,” she replies, “I’m home.”

That Ron is a fan of Thoreau is an important plot point. The anti-materialism that Thoreau championed finds a living practitioner in Ron. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him or Cary. He is jolly, handy, handsome, loving, wise – everything a gal could wish for. It is a testament to the coercive powers of society that Cary denies herself for as long as she does of the life she truly wants to live.

Sirk uses a rich color palette, and production-designs his projects to a T. His worlds are very detailed, almost claustrophobic. Multiple surfaces gleam and reflect the characters, until the last stunning image of Cary trapped within the reflection of her new TV set's inert screen. The camera opens up only when freethinkers such as Ron enter the scene.

Cary finds redemption (Ron was originally supposed to die!) and happiness with her perfect man. Neighbors be damned.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: East of Eden.