This archetypal melodrama sees Jane Wyman’s bourgeois widow Cary fall for her gardener Ron, played by Rock Hudson, in a romance that transcends class and age. The emotion is expressed as much through Sirk’s sumptuous mise-en-scene as through the action. The director’s trademark style is on full Technicolor display, all saturated primary colours, rich shadows, and sweeping music. The film follows their relationship from its furtive beginnings to a bittersweet Christmas denouement (watch out for the infamous reindeer).

 

Though it may sound like escapist fare, All That Heaven Allows also engages with the social reality of suburban American life during the decade. The relationship comes under threat from the pressures of a stifling conformism. Cary is expected to stick with her own kind, stuffy country-club bachelors, rather than the earthy and passionate Ron. When she tells her children she has found a new lease of life with Ron, they are horrified. The film is bursting with sexual repression, as both the characters and the film itself test the boundaries of what was socially acceptable at the time.

 

Cary is constantly penned in by her claustrophobic domestic surrounds. In a late scene, a heartbroken Cary receives a shining new television set from her children for Christmas, as they reassure her: “All you have to do is turn that dial and you have all the company you want, right there on the screen.” The camera moves in on the reflection of a distressed Cary, and we are left to wonder how many were left in their later lives with only the false cheer of the small screen (the great innovation of the 50s) for companionship.