All That Heaven Allows

Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson navigate social mores and their deepest desires in Douglas Sirk’s magnificent melodrama.

• Director
  Douglas Sirk
• With
  Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson
• USA 1955. 89min
• Digital
• Certificate
  U
• A Park Circus re-release (NFT2)

Douglas Sirk received a simple instruction for one of his colour masterpieces: ‘Please, please make them cry’. In a manicured middle-class suburb, society widow Cary Scott falls for handsome young gardener Ron Kirby. Wholesome, grounded and entirely at ease with himself, Ron is a breath of fresh air. But his folksy authenticity and down-to-earth view of the world has no place at the country club. Class friction and nosey neighbours soon threaten the romance, placing hurdles between our heroes and happiness. Sirk described his films as dramas of ‘swollen emotion’ – swooning soap operas that don’t so much undermine the clichés of Hollywood as knowingly play with them to the film’s advantage. Transgressive ideas are cleverly smuggled into the staging of this saturated 1950s hellscape, but above all there is a high-octane love story that’s guaranteed to draw tears, ecstasy and no small amount of outrage.

We'll meet briefly before the film and go for a snack and/or drink after the film (at the venue).

David (07887 683171)

P.S. There is a small chance I will be away on this date, but hopefully not.