Med kærlighedens ret
You know
those movies that make you roll your eyes? I mean, cry out “Come on!!”, shake
your head and roll your eyes. “All That Heaven Allows” is such a movie, at
least for me.
I have
previously remarked that Douglas Sirk’s movies reminded me of cheap novels from
women’s weekly magazines and that is nowhere more true than here with “All That
Heaven Allows”. The format, the story, the issues all have that kitschy feel
that is just too much. I suspect there is something else somewhere, maybe a
critique of mid-fifties values and ideals, but it is very bland.
So let us
just say from the outset that I am not impressed, that this is not really a
movie for me and that this review may be offensive to fans of the movie.
“All That
Heaven Allows” is the story of a woman, Cary (Jane Wyman), who lives alone in
her suburban house since her husband died and her grown children moved out. Her
husband had money and status and so she is still moving in those circles at the
country club. Then Cary meets Ron (Rock Hudson) who shows her an entirely
different kind of existence. Ron is a gardener, but more than that he is a free
spirit who does what he likes to do and cares little what other people think of
him. Cary and Ron falls in love and prepares to get married.
So far all
is well and fine. However everybody and their mother seem to have a problem
with that marriage. At the country club the all seem to take offense of Cary
marrying Ron. They had much preferred that she marry one of their own and
cannot relate to a gardener. Maybe it is envy, maybe just juicy gossip or maybe
they feel some rules have been broken. They certainly take some glee in spiting
Ron and Cary. Worse however is the reaction of Cary’s children. Ned (William
Reynolds) is a businessman and is mortified by letting the gardener in as well
as the prospect of selling the house and Kay (Gloria Talbott), who is supposed
to know everything about people from her psychology classes is so upset about what
people will think of her if her mother marries a gardener.
This story
in fact resembles that of “Marty”, except that Marty’s friends and family’s
objections, though silly, made immensely more sense than those of Cary’s
friends and family. Instead of discarding idiot friends like these and telling
her children to mind their own business Cary caves in and calls off the
wedding. Maybe you can imagine me rolling my eyes at this point. Had there been
a single good argument: a dependent child, somebody living at home, a worried professional
partner, a real physical risk to this marriage then we may have had a story,
but these are all a bunch of busy-bodies who hate to see somebody else doing
something unconventional. So fucking what.
True
enough, hardly has Cary called off the wedding before it becomes clear that
there are no real arguments against the marriage, but now, uh oh, they are
estranged from each other because Ron called bullshit and of course telling
each other that they do want to marry involves mistakes, accidents and a deer
looking into the window of the old mill in the new snow…
Oh my…
Well, there
are things I do like here. This is a contemporary movie and that means that
everything we see is 1956 and in color too. Cars, phone, houses, cloths and so
on, making this a veritable time capsule. I am always a sucker for that stuff.
It is also a time capsule in the way it presents the suburban ideal of the mid-fifties,
the glorified housewife and all the do’s and don’t’s. I often get the idea that
especially in America this period and lifestyle is the ideal for many people.
We certainly see it depicted often enough in movies and tv-series. If there is
anything subversive in this movie then it is how it refuses this ideal and
suggests that life can be lived in other ways. The problem is that that story
has been told a million times already, also before 56, so what is the
subversive in that?
I did not
care much for this film. Somehow I had expected some real crisis to occur, but
it is actually quite harmless. At least in “Written on the Wind” there was some
real drama, but here it is just blah. Well, on to the next movie, looking
forward to that.