All That Heaven Allows

Considered a masterpiece of expressionist melodrama, Douglas Sirk’s film depicts the sugar-coated world of the Eisenhower era floundering in the face of the constraining powers of social conventions. The affection that develops between a well-off widow and her gardener gives way to reflections on class prejudice and bourgeois social norms of the 1950s in the United States. Nonconformist Ron (Rock Hudson), living alone on the edge of the woods – like Thoreau on the shores of Lake Walden – comes under the scrutiny of Cary’s children and friends, while Cary must ask herself: is it worth sacrificing her own happiness for the acceptance of the group? In this unique Christmas romance – beautifully filmed in Technicolour by Russell Metty – Douglas Sirk points out that love later in life may taste just as sweet as the first crush.

Joanna Najbor

Douglas Sirk (1897–1987) was a German director who worked mainly in the United States. He started his career in Germany, but moved to Hollywood in 1937, where he would achieve his greatest fame with a string of melodramas directed in the 1950s. Though dismissed by critics at the time, they are now considered thematically complex masterpieces. The best-known of them are Magnificent Obsession (1954), Written in the Wind (1956) and Imitation of Life (1959).