All That Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk's melodrama, written as a critique of American small-town life. Cary is a widow, her children are at university and her place in town is fixed. She grows close to Ron, who tends her garden. He is younger, counted below her in class, and has no interest in the town's social order. The town makes it a subject at once, and the pressure becomes first gossip, then open objection from the children. The film's best-known moment is the giving of a gift: the children buy their mother a television so she will not be lonely. We see her reflection in the screen. Sirk's whole argument is in that single image. Ron's world is built through Thoreau's Walden: a simplified life, away from the town. Jane Wyman plays Cary, Rock Hudson plays Ron and Agnes Moorehead plays her friend. The film was decisive for Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is his reworking of it. One of the principal examples of its form for anyone who likes 1950s colour melodrama and the criticism Sirk sets beneath the surface. For a viewer expecting that objection stated aloud, the film never says it directly; it is all in colour, glass and reflection.