Seeing the doco series, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies, on ABC when I was a teenager was the kind of uber-text that sets you up with a list of references, of movies to one day track down and understand why they meant so much to Marty and his enthusiastic testifying. In this series, Scorsese showed clips from the Douglas Sirk melodrama, All That Heaven Allows (1955) and in particular one scene was stuck in my memory, which I always thought was the final scene of the movie, where a television is given as a Christmas present. Scorsese saw this moment as an example of cinema responding to the growing competition of television in the 1950s and how the framing of the TV set, reflecting sadly a lonely character in its blank screen, was an indictment about its place in the family home, a substitute for human connection. All That Heaven Allows is an uber-text itself and I’ve seen more movies referencing it (such as Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven) and the Sirkian style – where emotion and meaning are played out in the total frame and overall style from colourful set design and costuming. Finally seeing this movie for the first time, between its vibrant technicolor film stock and its evocation of 1950s small town suburbia, it felt like a transmission from another planet, another time and place. The vibrations are different here, to quote Sun Ra. Yet the emotions are clear and relatable as a lonely widow, Cary (Jane Wyman) steps outside of her social circle in a romance with a younger, more iconoclastic gardener, Ron (Rock Hudson). This becomes, unfortunately, the talk of the town for venomous country club gossips like Mona (Jacqueline Dewitt) and Cary’s ungrateful young adult children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). From this distance, the story feels like a period drama (based on a novel by Edna L and Harry Lee; adapted by Peg Fenwick) and the heightened aesthetic ensures the soap opera confrontations and narrative turns has an artistic impact. Everything appears lush and picturesque, even as its fabrications hold darker sentiments. I was quite taken by it, particularly Wyman and Hudson’s performances. Available to stream on Binge. Having only seen Imitation Of Life at uni, I’m keen for the other key Sirk texts like Magnificent Obsession and Written On The Wind. Recommended.
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