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    All That Heaven Allows

    Reviewed by
    pietroantoni@

    Universal International's 1955 blockbuster of a film ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS starring JANE WYMAN and ROCK HUDSON repaired these two beloved stars who had made such a splash the year before in MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION! Apparently they HAD to be teamed up once more due to public demand and Universal allowed for a very healthy budget and total freedom to director Douglas Sirk, unheard of in those days.

    This 'joyous/sad' 50's feature is newly remastered and released by the CRITERION COLLECTION; all packaged in a 3 disc set: Blu-Ray, DVD and a third disc full of supplements of all kinds. The film has so been cleaned up it's impossible to think it was made 60 years ago. This sort of film is what in the 1940's would have been labelled "Women's Pictures." But no Women's picture of the previous decade could touch these undeniably beautiful melodramas made by DOUGLAS SIRK, a great director who understood the power of a woman, a thinking woman, and so placed her at the very centre of his 1950's features. Jane Wyman becomes the very embodiment of the Sirk woman. Jane was clever enough to know this soap opera type film would be her future having reached that certain age. But never could she have imagined that the baddest Hollywood heartthrob of the era, ROCK, would be her co-star. What I learned from my reading is that Hudson was out of the closet in his personal life even before the mid-fifties... it was already common knowledge in various circles that kept being denied by the studios for which he worked. The Studios went on to fool the public for almost the next 30 years.

    All That Heaven Allows deals with a May-September romance, but it is not as simple as all that. This type romance always brought scorn to the woman of the 1950's. What Sirk does is to dig deep into the mores of 50's America and expose all the hypocrisy as bluntly as he could muster. So this heart breaker of a film becomes a very strong indictment all within the confines of the most exquisitely shot film. Profound feeling is the very fabric of the film as Sirk continues his onslaught on small-town American conformity and a class structure that was certainly always present. Almost every shot leaves the viewer with a vivid and distinct emotional timbre as we care so much for the two in love. The film is only 90 minutes long so a viewer with any knowledge of Sirk can see his emblematic, economical use of cinéma. Within this type film, Douglas Sirk's stars' performances (WYMAN/HUDSON) mesh so well with his particular style. He is smart and gives them plenty of screen space appropriate to their status. As we view HEAVEN sixty years later, it is the complete 50's feature for more than just stated above. Not even a NUDE arm is at all visible in the film. All the sexual charge between Cary (Wyman) and Ron (Hudson) is shown through looks and gestures with not a hint of any open mouthed kissing. That was the code of the day and you had to abide by it. But Sirk masterfully articulates the highs and lows of their love, of their sexual relationship displacing it onto beautiful, meaningful objects all about them. It works so perfectly and again shows what a visual master Sirk had become by this point.

    This stunning film is the pinnacle, the very zenith, the trademark of all that is heavenly in these romances for the ages in which the mature style of Douglas Sirk blossomed. His cinematic composition of light, shade, incredible use of vivid colour, varied camera angles, all his components of the "melodramatic" style brought him a reputation that made him a favourite of later filmmakers like Fassbinder, Tarantino, John Waters and Almodovar. There was no one quite like this director so it is such a shame that he left Hollywood, never to return, at the very height of his career and creative powers.

    All That Heaven Allows brought me an emotional charge impossible to foresee in a film of that era. It is SIRK foremost but an economical screenplay allows us to take it all in without a bit of ridicule. The musical score by Frank Skinner will literally make you touch the heavens and the cinematography of Russell Metty makes the screen explode with colour like you've never seen before, shooting distinctly in a style that was all his own. A MUST FOR TRUE FILM LOVERS!

    10
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    pietroantoni@  9.1.2015 age: 36-49 14,528 reviews

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