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I love the movie Breanna chose; David Bowie is a goblin BOSS.

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Lately I've been fascinated with melodrama, in particular the way its priorities differ from the expectations of what we might loosely refer to as a "good film". In general, we seem to want relatable characters in realistic situations which in turn evoke an emotional response; but in melodrama, everything is backwards. As Sidney Lumet once said, "In a well-written drama, the story comes out of the characters. The characters in a well-written melodrama come out of the story." Perhaps this is why the term has come to take on pejorative connotations in recent years: in melodrama, emotion comes first, even if it's at the expense of character or narrative. In melodrama, sentimentality is king.

If characters in a generic melodrama emerge from the story, characters in a Douglas Sirk melodrama seem to emerge from the lighting. In All That Heaven Allows, Sirk uses color saturation and light/dark contrast to communicate the emotions of his characters: oversaturated color for emotional overload (feelings almost spill out of the characters into the color palette) and dark shadow for emotional repression (feelings are pulled so far inward that they suck the color and light out of the image).

He introduces this concept very quickly: from the first scenes we see the loveless Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) dressed in drab, gray, colorless clothing, next to her vivacious neighbor Sara Warren (Agnes Moorehead), dressed in a vibrant blue that jumps off the screen thanks to the richness of the 50's Technicolor.

Sirk continues to play with color and shadow in an early scene where he establishes the ways he will use lighting through the way he stages his actors. The scene opens with Cary, still reminiscing after her first meeting with the handsome gardener Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), shot against a background lit completely with a dark blue. There is lots of rich color, visualizing her lust for Kirby, but it is dark, showing how she's trying to keep it hidden (even from herself). Her (emotional) blues are externalized onto the blue of the image.

This is then reversed when her children learn that she's going out with Harvey, a bachelor even more old and lonely than she is (and "the only one in town"). They walk into the blue light and become (emotionally) blue for her (we even get a close up to emphasize the point). This exchange is concluded when Cary changes into a bright red dress (signifying the embrace of her enflamed desire), at which her daughter Kay (Gloria Talbott) whistles suggestively.

This framework culminates in two scenes at the climax of the film which take Sirk's stylistic decisions to their limit. The central conflict of the film revolves around Cary's love for Kirby and the way public perception holds her back from him. Her neighbors and even her children are all judgmental of her because she has affection for a mere gardener, not someone of similar social status. This conflict reaches its peak in a scene where Kay comes home distraught because of something she overheard someone saying about Cary.

As the scene begins, Kay throws herself on her bed, which is bathed in multicolored light (coming from a colored-glass window only Douglas Sirk could imagine). She tells Cary that people have been talking about her behind her back, saying that she had been romantically involved with Kirby even before her husband died. This is too much for Kay to feel, and her excessive emotions are externalized onto the screen.

The excess of the multifaceted coloring draws a direct parallel to the excess of Kay's feelings, and just as this acts as the emotional climax of the film it also acts as the visual climax. Also significant to note is that Kay is not only lit more colorfully than her mother, she is also lit more darkly. She is in a state of emotional overload, but the darkness signifies that she is trying to repress these feelings.

In the following scene, Cary leaves to confront Kirby and tell him that they can't be together anymore. Cary says she wants to get married, but that they have to wait in order to protect the children (and, possibly, her own reputation); Kirby says that he's beginning to see how easy it would be for him to change himself for her (something he said from the start of their relationship he would never do). Both characters are holding themselves back from their emotions.

In stark contrast to the previous scene, this one is lit with desaturated earth tones and an abundance of black shadows (as well as support beams which visualize their emotional separation). They both still love each other, but they're repressing their feelings, and the color palette is repressed likewise. The brightest moment in the scene comes when the two characters walk up to a large window letting in light from outside, mirroring the intensity both of Kirby's affection for the outdoors (his point of identification) and of Cary's sensitivity to the judgment of her friends and family (her internalization of the opinion of others). This light from the outside (nature and society) casts a shadow on both characters.

Like other melodramas, Douglas Sirk's All The Heaven Allows functions through its fairly simple and almost stereotypical characters. However, where a more traditional drama might present more complex characters through its screenplay, Sirk presents the layers of his characters through his lighting, visualizing emotional conflict through through a style that takes on its own substance.

For further reading, check out Carson Lund's close reading of the film's use of dissolves.

Full Imgur album

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Style As Substance: Lighting in All that Heaven Allows

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Lately I've been fascinated with melodrama, in particular the way its priorities differ from the expectations of what we might loosely refer to as a "good film". In general, we seem to want relatable characters in realistic situations which in turn evoke an emotional response; but in melodrama, everything is backwards.

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The weather may be cold, but the love sure isn't.

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The weather may be cold, but the love sure isn't.

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Douglas Sirk once said: "This is the dialectic-there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art." When All That Heaven Allows was released by Universal Pictures in 1955, it was just another critically unnoticed Hollywood genre product, designed to appeal to the trashy "women's weepie" audience. Now, in retrospect, it is considered to be closer to the art side of Sirk's dialectic, and one of his key films. But this is part of a wider process of critical reevaluation in which his entire body of work has been rediscovered and reappraised by successive generations of filmmakers and historians.

No one seeing the film at the time of its release would have imagined its director to be an elegant, extremely erudite European whose career started in the theater of Weimar Germany and who was an early director of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. After a short but successful career at UFA studios in the vacuum left by the massive emigration of Jewish talent after the Nazis came to power in 1933, Sirk made his way to Hollywood, directing his first film there in 1942. Following an unsuccessful attempt to return to Germany in 1949-50, he signed a contract with Universal. His movie career then culminated with his highest-profile films, the melodramas of 1952-58. By 1959, he was Universal's most successful director. At that very moment, he left moviemaking and America. Until his death in 1987, he and his wife, Hilde, lived in Lugano, Switzerland.

All That Heaven Allows marks the final turning point in Sirk's strange and varied career. On the back of Magnificent Obsession's success the previous year, Universal gave him a budget and freedom that enabled his mature style to blossom. All That Heaven Allows contains all the elements of characteristically Sirkian composition: light, shade, color, and camera angles combine with his trademark use of mirrors to break up the surface of the screen. Here are all the components of the "melodramatic" style on which Sirk's critical reputation is based and that has made him the favorite of later generations of filmmakers, from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Quentin Tarantino, from John Waters to Pedro Almodóvar.

But at the time, Universal was just anxious to repeat its successful pairing of Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in a romance between an older woman and an extremely handsome younger man. Wyman was still a big star but, by then, past her prime. Recently divorced from Ronald Reagan, and aware that her future lay with the soap-opera audience, she was pleased to be teamed with Hudson again. At the time, he was the new Hollywood heartthrob, who, although "out of the closet" in his personal life, had to be continually shut back in publicly and professionally by an anxious studio.

The All That Heaven Allows version of the May-September romance formula has Wyman playing Cary Scott, a well-to-do widow with two college-age children and a dull social life at the country club. The emptiness at the heart of her existence is filled when she meets Ron Kirby, the young gardener-turned-tree farmer who prunes the trees that line her all-American suburban yard-and then comes back to court her. This simple love story is disrupted by the vicious snobbery of her children and high-society acquaintances. Early in the film, Cary is at her dressing table, preparing for an evening with the Stoningham "elite." To one side stands a vase containing the branches Ron cut for her earlier, so that Cary's awakening interest in him carries over from the previous sequence. In a beautifully composed shot, the children first appear reflected in the mirror, coming between Cary and the vase, and then, as the camera pulls away, she is taken back into the room and toward the children. This one shot tells the story of the dilemma that Cary will face for the rest of the film and is typical of Sirk's emblematic, economical use of cinema. His stars' performances mesh well with this style. He gives them the screen space appropriate for their status, but the sexual charge between Cary and Ron is articulated through looks and gestures, and the roller-coaster highs and lows of their love are displaced onto the things that surround them.

Objects play their own significant part in expressing the emotions blocked by convention in small-town, middle-class 1950s America. Sirk creates a cinema in which the screen itself speaks more articulately than the protagonists, tongue-tied as they are by the codes of their fictional setting, the powers of censorship in Hollywood at the time, and the norms of the family melodrama genre. Out of these constraints, Sirk builds his film, while also using a typically melodramatic score to punctuate points and to accompany the tones and textures of the actors' voices.

Years after their initial dismissal (and sometimes derision) by reviewers, Sirk's successful string of big-budget soapers (and the director himself) have acquired a rich and complex critical afterlife, as different aspects and facets of the films have been reclaimed by successive phases of film criticism. For the auteurists and structuralists of the 1960s, Sirk's mastery of cinematic language transcended the working conditions of the Hollywood studio system; feminists reclaimed him as a director of melodrama, with his women protagonists and dramas of interiority, domestic space, and sexual desire; gay critics today see a camp subtext in his films with Hudson, in which ambiguous situations can be read as double entendre.

The gap between the contemporary perception of All That Heaven Allows and that of the later critics is closed by Sirk himself, who once explained the conditions of work at the studio: "At least I was allowed to work on the material-so that I restructured to some extent some of the rather impossible scripts of the films I had to direct. Of course, I had to go by the rules, avoid experiments, stick to family fare, have 'happy endings,' and so on. Universal didn't interfere with either my camera work or my cutting-which meant a lot to me." Although All That Heaven Allows does, on the face of it, have a happy ending, its "happiness" is twisted with more than a touch of Sirkian irony.
This piece originally appeared in the Criterion Collection's 2001 DVD edition of All That Heaven Allows.

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All That Heaven Allows: An Articulate Screen

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Douglas Sirk once said: "This is the dialectic-there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art." When All That Heaven Allows was released by Universal Pictures in 1955, it was just another critically unnoticed Hollywood genre product, designed to appeal to the trashy "women's weepie" audience.

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Douglas Sirk romance with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman: you know this isn't going to be a smart-assed dissertation filled with intellectuals swapping barbed, ironic witticisms. Even so, this 1950s melodrama - as underscored by Todd Haynes' modern riff, Far from Heaven - offers smart insights into the American class system and carries a powerful emotional clout way beyond the usual limitations of its genre.

Wyman plays a widow slowly emerging from mourning to embrace the world again, caught between the daredevil impulses which see her step out in a gossip-generating, low-cut, crimson dress, and her deep sense of propriety and responsibility to her children. She rejects a marriage offer from an older man who promises her companionship and affection, but is drawn to her gardener, Ron, who is impetuous, bold, direct and opens wine bottles with his teeth. Everything you want from a tumultuous weepy is here: hard, breathless kisses; big, brave declarations of violent, undying love; battle-weary, star-crossed lovers who meet obstacles at every turn. But Sirk surpasses melodramatic cliches by securing an exceptional performance from Wyman, whose soft face, as watchful and nervously expectant as a child's, is captivating throughout, subtly registering every chink of hope and approaching black cloud. This is her, and Sirk's finest hour.

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All That Heaven Allows: No 11 best romantic film of all time

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Douglas Sirk romance with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman: you know this isn't going to be a smart-assed dissertation filled with intellectuals swapping barbed, ironic witticisms. Even so, this 1950s melodrama - as underscored by Todd Haynes' modern riff, Far from Heaven - offers smart insights into the American class system and carries a powerful emotional clout way beyond the usual limitations of its genre.

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Beauty in "All That Heaven Allows" (1955).

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Beauty in "All That Heaven Allows" (1955).

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A Cinema of Beautiful Devastation: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS | Cinematheque

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This essay on Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) was written by Erica Moulton, PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication Arts at UW Madison. A 35mm print of All That Heaven Allows will screen at the Cinematheque on Saturday, September 15 at 7 p.m. Sirk’s film screens as a prelude to…

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Scandal has arrived in the small town of Stoningham, a quintessential New England locale lined with homes filled with housewives, successful working husbands, and determined children. There is a town gossip, Mona ( Jacqueline De Wit), who ensures everyone knows every little detail of the town chitchat. However, in this case, she has to do very little work. While everybody buzzes about their daily lives, there is an unconscious dividing line that governs Stoningham. The workers and middle-class have their own lives, while the upper-class have theirs. Those who dare to cross this line are to be met with a full-court press to ensure that they do not continue on this path. Cary Scott ( Jane Wyman), a beloved upper-class widow with two perfect kids and a revered late husband, has been the latest to offend this line. Starting up a romance with her gardener (her gardener!) Ron Kirby ( Rock Hudson), people are shocked. He belongs to the lower class and, even worse, he is younger than her. One can only imagine what a middle-aged woman sees in a younger man...

Director probes the isolation and loneliness felt by the housewife. Cary's plight is worsened by the death of her husband, leaving her with absolutely nobody. Her two kids, Ned ( Douglas Sirk was one of the few filmmakers who dared to shine a spotlight on the plight of suburbia in the 1950s. He saw not a line of homes, but a line of prison cells. Everyone may claim to have been happy, but on the inside, there was something lacking. Perhaps nothing he made showed this as clearly as All that Heaven Allows or its follow-up, There's Always Tomorrow . Whereas the latter focused the spotlight on the working husband, All that Heaven Allows William Reynolds) and Kay ( Gloria Talbott), will join the town in criticizing her love for Ron, but the two push back out of a need for normalcy. They do not relish the thought of their mother being stuck at home all alone- in fact, they embrace the idea of her marrying their father's former business partner Harvey ( Conrad Nagel) - but they do resent being pulled out of their comfortable social place. Yet, even as they complain, they too will leave Cary alone, as Ned's career takes him to Paris and Kay opts to marry her boyfriend. Cary's best friend Sara ( Agnes Moorehead) offers little respite, either inviting her to stuffy dinners with Mona or similarly trying to police the class barriers between her and Ron.

For Cary, the world of Stoningham is a cold and frigid one. The matching snow or the frequent blue technicolor that washes over Jane Wyman is no mistake, highlighting her increasing desperation and longing for connection. Men such as Harvey may offer some company, but not the feeling that would actually lift her out of this prison cell. The only man who would is Ron. He would shake up her life for the better, inviting her to inclusive and infectiously exciting parties with his friends Mick ( Charles Drake) and Alida ( Virginia Grey). Even when Ron and Cary's relationship is on the rocks due to the outside forces, it is Alida who stands by Cary and shows her the kind of friendship that Sara cannot offer. Her isolation is met with connection by those deemed "lesser" than her. Those within her "class", such as her kids and friends, offer not their love and attention but a television. It is sold as a portal to the world for her to see everything, but it is really a monument erected to symbolize her permanent removal from that world. It offers not connection but distance, keeping her cooped up inside where she can no longer embarrass anyone.

The rules of this society are simple: husbands climb the career ranks at their business-based job and wives stay home to host parties. All the while, they accumulate wealth and pompousness in the name of putting on airs about how 'classy' they are to people they cannot stand. Sirk sees through the thin facade of this world, offering up Ron as a man who not just saves Mick - a previously unhappy business executive from it but who shows Cary that there is another way. Everyone in Stoningham looks down their noses at gardeners or shuts the door on their housekeepers who are hard at work. In speaking of Ron, they flippantly discuss his career and wonder why he would stay as a gardener when he could always work in business to become wealthier. Everything in Stoningham is about money, not affection or love. It is a hollowed out world, deprived of its heart with nothing but greed in its place. The townsfolk, like Cary's children, seek normalcy. Anything that upsets this balance or gets in the way of their cushy life is cast away. Instead, they hide out at the country club and their parties, tucking away their feelings and beliefs in a place even they themselves cannot find. As in There's Always Tomorrow , there is a robotic feeling that pervades All that Heaven Allows . It is as though Cary is a robot brought to life, awoken to its greater possibilities by someone who knew nothing but.

The romance that Ron and Cary embark upon is often quite lovely. It is made all the more beautiful thanks to the excellent technicolor bathing them in warm reds and oranges when together, as though there were a fire between them that keeps them from the cold snow all around. Their energy together is infectious, even when it is upset by Cary's frequent reminders of the world they occupy. Fighting off these pressures and constantly returning to one another's embrace, the pair may have a great distance between them at times but it is something that cannot keep them apart. Hudson and Wyman's terrific chemistry sells this romance, capturing the mixed feelings and internal prejudice they must confront to make it work. It's hard not to melt when Ron looks up and says to her, "Cary, you've come home," at the end. As with some of Sirk's best 1950s films, this is a pure melodrama, complete with requisite cheesy lines and theatrical emotions, but it works so well. It is poured on thick, but in a way that is hard to resist within a story and romance that prove incredibly sentimental.

All that Heaven Allows is a classic for good reason. Probing love and class in a meaningful way that shines a light on the issues facing the shuttered-in housewives of the 1950s, All that Heaven Allows creates not just empathy but matches Cary's escapist desperations. As she looks at the prison cell containing her and every little accommodation built to make her more "comfortable", she cannot help but want to run. Ron offers this to her and so much more, bringing affection she never thought possible. Wonderfully portrayed by Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson with gorgeous technicolor covering every inch of this film, All that Heaven Allows is perhaps the magnum opus from the masterful Douglas Sirk.

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Love and Class in All that Heaven Allows

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Scandal has arrived in the small town of Stoningham, a quintessential New England locale lined with homes filled with housewives, successful working husbands, and determined children. There is a town gossip, Mona (Jacqueline De Wit), who ensures everyone knows every little detail of the town chitchat.

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a romance for people who don't usually like romance

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a romance for people who don't usually like romance

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creating mood through color and composition...

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creating mood through color and composition...