Artist All That Heaven Allows
Douglas Sirk's wrenching 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows is so exceptional that even its remakes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats The Soul and Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, are brilliant. Stories about love affairs spoiled by unspoken societal codes are always potent (see also: The Age Of Innocence, In The Mood For Love), and Sirk's film brings those emotions home with unguarded emotion. (So unguarded, in fact, that Sirk's work in general has become painful to watch among today's "knowing" audiences.) Here, the class differences between a widow (Jane Wyman) and her gardener (Rock Hudson)—not to mention the expectation that widows are never supposed to love again—feeds a sewing circle full of smiling vipers.
Updated 11/04/2009
