Film Still

All That Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk

United States

1955

89 minutes

1.77:1

English

95

Synopsis

Jane Wyman is a repressed wealthy widow and Rock Hudson is the hunky Thoreau-following gardener who loves her in Douglas Sirk’s heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s small-town America. Sirk utilizes expressionist colors, reflective surfaces, and frames-within-frames to convey the loneliness and isolation of a matriarch trapped by the snobbery of her children and the gossip of her social-climbing country club chums. Criterion is proud to present this subversive Hollywood tearjerker in a special edition.

Cast

Cary ScottJane Wyman
Ron KirbyRock Hudson
Sara WarrenAgnes Moorehead
HarveyConrad Nagel
Alida AndersonVirginia Grey
Kay ScottGloria Talbot
Ned ScottWilliam Reynolds
Mick AndersonCharles Drake
Dr. HennessyHayden Rorke
Mona PlashJacqueline de Wit
Jo-AnnLeigh Snowden
Howard HofferDonald Curtis
George WarrenAlex Gerry
ManuelNestor Paiva
Mr. WeeksForrest Lewis
Tom AllenbyTol Avery
Mary AnnMerry Anders

Credits

DirectorDouglas Sirk
ProducerRoss Hunter
ScreenplayPeg Fenwick
Based on the story byEdna L. Lee and Harry Lee
CinematographyRussell Metty
Art directionAlexander Golitzen and Eric Orbom
Set decorationRussell A. Gausman and Julia Heron
EditingFrank Gross
MusicFrank Skinner

Disc Features

  • New widescreen digital transfer, enhanced for 16×9 televisions
  • A half hour of excerpts from Behind the Mirror: A Profile of Douglas Sirk, a 1979 BBC documentary featuring rare interview footage with the director
  • “Imitation of Life: On the Films on Douglas Sirk”: an illustrated essay by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • A collection of vintage lobby cards and production stills
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
  • Exclusive liner notes by noted film theorist Laura Mulvey

From the Current

ROSENBAUM ON SOUL

Aug 6, 2009

Jonathan Rosenbaum has been posting a lot of his past work on his (relatively) new blog, a real boon for cinephiles, as the former Chicago Reader critic’s archives are four bounteous decades deep. The latest to appear is a recent essay...

The Sirk-Hudson Connection

by Mark Rappaport Jan 21, 2009

It’s a clichéd truism that moviemaking is a collaborative art. Of course it is, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of directors working time and again with the same crew members, trusted writers, cameramen, production designers, editors, even costume designers, to prove it. We all...

All That Heaven Allows

by Laura Mulvey Jun 18, 2001

Douglas Sirk once said: “This is the dialectic—there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” When All That Heaven Allows was released by Universal Studios in 1955 it...

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Available Editions

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DVD

1 Disc

SRP: $39.95

Criterion Store price

$31.96