All That Heaven Allows (1955)

(On Cable TV, August 2020) The Douglas Sirk formula that felt so daring back in the 1950s has been completely absorbed by today’s movie mainstream – to the point of seeing even more daring movies on daytime TV. I’m sure that All That Heaven Allows must have felt slightly scandalous back in 1955 – after all, it’s about a wealthy widow who gets romantically involved with a blue-collar landscaper working at her house, with a full coop of hen tut-tutting the relationship as hard as they could in the confines of a small northeastern town. There are complications and a break-up, but since there’s at least half an hour left in the movie, we know it’s not going to remain that way. Tonally, All That Heaven Allows is very much a melodrama: musical cues and near-parodic acting clearly highlight what you were supposed to feel, which actually acts as a handy guide for modern audiences. Jane Wyman stars as the widow, but Rock Hudson earns most of the attention as the landscaper, an essentially perfect man solely held back by her peers’ opinion of people like him. Much of the film has aged ridiculously – this stuff would be the premise of a Hallmark channel romantic comedy these days, not an overwrought drama. (It doesn’t help that I still have vivid memories of Far from Heaven, obviously inspired by this.) But one thing has aged truly well, and that’s the super-saturated colour cinematography of the film. From the first moment of the movie, as the camera pans over a bright, colourful, lovely autumn landscape, this is a film that makes a strong and deliberate use of colour as emotional highlighting. It’s quite impressive even if you don’t care much about the plot, and that may actually be one of the best ways to see All That Haven Allows even today.