'all that heaven allows'

set in the 1950’s a middle class american housewife- a widow with two grown children falls in love with the wrong kind of man. he is younger than he is, terrific looking and belongs to the wrong social class- he is the son of a gardener. when the two of them decide to get married her world of clubhouses and cocktail parties revolts against the intrusion of the strange man and her children resent the new intruder. she is forced to choose in between true love and the value system of the only society she knows. this society has her pigeonholed as a well behaved, well to do, lonely widow who should behave as is appropriate for such ‘unfortunate’ women. the status quo must not be rocked.

its unfortunate that melodrama has been seen as a disreputable form of storytelling. i think often it is so effective like it does in very good hindi cinema or in ghatak. the characters by becoming almost becoming representations become sometimes even more human in the highly stylized staging of the story. and does the story become a parable? in this case about love and identity, beautifully told.

i remembered ‘far from heaven’ which overtly paid tribute to this film in telling a story of repressed love – gay, inter-racial and in between people of different classes. i think i had liked that film as much as i liked this one. here the subtext of sexual repression was even amusing at times as when rock hudson who plays the gardener wishes that jane wyman was a man (“just in this way”). i need to watch more douglas sirk films.