All I Desire

Years ago Naomi left her husband and three children and went off to be an actress. Now a letter inviting her to her youngest daughter's school play brings her back. The town has not forgiven her. Her husband is the school principal and respectable; her return disturbs everyone's arrangements. And the man she had an affair with is still there. The subject is not family but the impossibility of taking back a life you chose. Naomi is not a successful actress; she works small clubs in the provinces and tells nobody. Coming back, she has to carry two lies at once. The form is Douglas Sirk's known melodrama: mirrors, doorways, layered interior light. Her standing on a threshold in scene after scene is deliberate. The best-known detail is the ending. Sirk wanted the film to end bleakly; the studio imposed a happy resolution and he later said plainly that he was unhappy with the change. The film betrays its own tone in its last five minutes because of it. Barbara Stanwyck plays Naomi, Richard Carlson her husband and Lyle Bettger her former lover. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties American melodrama and Stanwyck. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a consistent ending; the finale is plainly bolted on.