Hit Me with Your Best Shot: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

*This post is part of the "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series at The Film Experience*

Many thanks to Nathaniel R at The Film Experience for reviving this series, bringing me back to this blog for the first time in three very long years. Dissertation writing probably won't allow me to do frequent posting, but let's see if we can revive this venture.

All That Heaven Allows is a film about contrasts. That's an oversimplification, of course, and very close to a Simpsons' quote. And yet, it fits the film well. The narrative, adapted by Peg Fenwick from a story by Edna L. Lee and Harry Lee, concerns Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), a well-to-do New England widow, who has fallen for her much younger arborist Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), whom her adult children reject and the town judges in stares and whispers. Visually, director Douglas Sirk and cinematographer Russell Metty illustrate this binary by taking full advantage of Technicolor to paint the entire film in bold reds and deep blues. The reds, frequently worn by Wyman (including her auburn hair), consistently appear in relation to Cary's desire: they set her apart from the blues of conformity, the society that frowns upon her romance.

At home with her children

At a party

Ron, too, is often clad in red flannels. His incredible farmhouse is also a reddish hue, surrounded by the warm red and orange fall foliage. Inside, Cary and Ron kindle their love in the red glow of the fireplace. It's sensual, beautiful, and maybe a little obvious, but undoubtedly effective.

This is not meant to be dismissive of Sirk in any way; he and his films endured enough of that during his peak years, when the sweeping melodramas he directed were frequently dismissed as "women's films," only to be reconsidered with the rise of acolytes such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Pedro Almodóvar, John Waters, Todd Haynes, and Wong Kar-Wai, to name a few. The boldness of his colors though, and their significance, point to a significant cultural sea-change that the film dramatizes: a transition from Depression-era collectivism into a privileging of the individual. It's the unique dilemma of American liberal democracy to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the collective, one without a single clear solution (which seems to be even more of fantasy now). The film is considered a repudiation of 1950s American social mores, yet politically speaking, the film rejects a conservative, judgmental, puritanical society in favor of a more libertarian vision in which Cary can love whomever she wishes, without judgment. Which makes the end of the film all the more ambivalent: while Cary may not be with Ron, she has taken hold of her agency. It's bittersweet, sure, but there's a maturity to that ambivalence that is missing from some of the era's most well-known films (and, certainly, from the Reagan-era rose-colored nostalgia that pervades to this day).

This is all a little academic, I admit, but it sets up my selection for best shot.

*Best shot*

Cary invites Ron to dinner with her children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). Both Kay and Ned disapprove of this relationship, and telegraph this clearly by standing on the staircase, coldly welcoming this man into their home. The color, however, is particularly interesting. Though he stands in the red light of the right side of the frame (thus remaining the object of Cary's desire), both Ron and Cary wear darker blues in their suit and dress, respectively. This is their attempt to fit their relationship into the expectations of her children (and thus, society), yet the night will not be a success. There's an ambivalence to the middle of the frame, however; the blues in Kay's and Ned's costumes are lighter than deeper blues of the film (and the left of the frame), and they're lit in the yellow glow of the chandelier - one of the only prominent uses of yellow in the film. They disapprove, sure, but it's not for social reasons: they're concerned more with what will happen to their childhood home if their mother sells it and moves in with Ron. It's more than just a collectivist vs. individualist conflict; it's here that the film challenges the binary that it set up for itself, suggesting a third option that could open to even more dimensions to the conflict. Though the color scheme, all primary colors, is relatively simple, it conveys the complexity of this interaction.

It's that complexity that makes All That Heaven Allows one of the finest Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Thank goodness the film, and Sirk's career as a whole, was reconsidered and elevated to one of the greats.