Cinema
All That Heaven Allows
Douglas Sirk · 1955
Synopsis
Stoningham, a small New England town, in the fifties. Cary Scott, a well-off widow whose two children, Ned and Kay, are students, divides her life between the club and suitors of her own age. Ron Kirby, younger than she is, comes to prune her trees; he runs a nursery and lives in an old mill, away from town. Through him, she discovers friends who are indifferent to money and rank. He asks her to marry him. A neighbour spreads gossip, the club mocks her, and her children oppose the plan: Kay says the gossip is ruining her life, Ned threatens never to come back.
Context
The film belongs to the series of colour melodramas that Sirk made for Universal-International, which wanted it in order to profit from an earlier success of the director; these films were long regarded as commissioned products. French critics, beginning with Cahiers du cinéma in 1967, read in it an attack on the society they seemed to celebrate, and Sirk's interviews with Jon Halliday, published in 1971, fed this reappraisal.
Who it is for
A melodrama of one hour twenty-nine minutes, in vivid colours, open to a reading at either the first or the second degree.
Prizes and reception
Overlooked by critics on its release, it inspired Fassbinder in 1974 and Todd Haynes in 2002, and entered the National Film Registry in 1995.
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