Hitting the shelves this week alongside the fabulous release of ‘Magnificent Obsession’ is ‘All that Heaven Allows’, arguably the greatest film from Douglas Sirk’s late career triumphs. His gorgeously rendered melodrama starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson has been given a stunning digital 2K restoration from Criterion.
Douglas Sirk’s commercially successful pictures from this period in his career were largely received poorly by critics, as they were considered “women’s pictures” and therefore banal and unimportant. However, in the subsequent decades there has been a gradual rediscovery of Sirk as well as a critical re-evaluation of his films. There’s a lot more going on in these melodramas than just flimsy romance and domestic piffle, as they were dismissed as at the time.
The critical reappraisal began with film scholars of the 1960s, but the reconnection with audiences in recent years seems to have been driven in part by the edgier filmmakers whom he inspired (Fassbinder, Lynch, Almodovar et al), and of course the beautiful hyper-real visual style Sirk brought to these films. If one good thing comes from the modern trend of sludgy-grey flat digital filmmaking, it might just be movie fans rediscovering that films did actually used to look good.
And no film has ever looked better than ‘All that Heaven Allows’, with its autumnal textures, precise production design, and painterly compositions, it is an absolute visual feast from the first frame until the last. Jane Wyman stars as Cary, a wealthy widow living in an affluent suburb of New England. She spends her days at the country club, where a few dull men are vying for her affection, but the interest is purely one way.
Cary prefers spending time with Ron (Rock Hudson), the younger man who has been tending her garden all through the summer. She discovers he is an intelligent and down-to-earth man, who unlike her country club friends, has no interest in status or materialistic things. When a romance develops between them, it leads to scorn and ridicule from Cary’s society acquaintances and her college-age children.
Sirk makes incredible use of colour, shade, and reflection to tell what on the surface might appear to be a typical weepy, but it is in fact a scathing social satire of the hypocrisy and class prejudices of bourgeois 1950s America. It of course still satisfies its primary goal as a profoundly emotional and sentimental heart-warming romance, but there’s a lot more happening beneath the glossy surface.
Breathlessly romantic and deliciously entertaining, ‘All that Heaven Allows’ is the definitive Hollywood melodrama. Much like the central romance in the film, it might invite laughter and scorn from modern audiences not used to such earnest storytelling, but approach with an open mind and you’ll be rewarded with a stunning, complex, and richly symbolic experience.
The special features on the disc kick off with an audio commentary recorded in 2014 with film scholars John Mercer and Tamar Jeffers-McDonald. ‘Behind the Mirror: A Profile of Douglas Sirk’ is a series of fascinating interview excerpts with Sirk, taken from a 1979 BBC documentary.
‘Rock Hudson’s Home Movies’ is an hour-long video essay from 1992 directed by Mark Rappaport, exploring Hudson’s sexuality and celebrity through a provocative mix of voice-over narration, film clips, and live action. The concept of having an actor narrating a fictional version of Hudson’s memoir from beyond the grave is more than a touch crass, and the quality of the film clips is terrible.
Next up is a 2007 interview with William Reynolds (who plays Cary’s snobbish son Ned in the film) in which he talks about his experiences working within the studio system, and the films he made with Douglas Sirk. Finally, there is a 1982 interview with Douglas Sirk from an episode of French television series Cinéma cinémas.
The booklet comes with an essay by film scholar Laura Mulvey and an excerpt from a 1971 essay on Sirk by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorhead, Conrad Nagel, Gloria Talbott, William Reynods Director: Douglas Sirk Writer: Peg Fenwick Released By: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Certificate: 12 Duration: 89 mins Release Date: 13th March 2023
