Please Screw the Gardener: Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows

I love director Douglas Sirk. His devotion to his off-the-chain visual film style makes me happy, no matter who is pining away, dying, or going blind in his films. But I had never seen one of his most definitive works. Until now...

All That Heaven Allows (1955) stars Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in their second teaming for Sirk. As in Magnificent Obsession (1954), they play lovers who encounter barriers to the fulfillment of their passions. In Obsession it's the fact that Hudson had a hand in Wyman's husband's death, and the unlucky Wyman's blindness. In Heaven, the roadblocks to love seem more realistic- but no-less daunting.

Wyman plays Cary Scott, a widow who lives in an upper crust home in a tony community whose two children are leaving the nest. The image of the respectable town pillar is shattered visually, however, when Cary shows up to a cocktail party in a very un-widowly red dress. Tired of the advances of white-haired insurance executives, Cary instead takes up with her handsome, sensitive, and younger (gasp!) gardener.

Said gardener, Ron Kirby, is played by Rock Hudson- and honestly, I can't think of a good reason to not bang your gardener if he's Rock Hudson. But the rest of the town and her own children are aghast at this flagrant violation of Fifties social mores. Will Cary give up her social standing for her working class man? It's the stuff that soap operas are made of.

What elevates Sirk's films above their treacly plots is his saturated use of color, costumes, and sets to bring out his character's feelings. Technicolor greys, reds, greens, yellows, and violets are frequently used to accentuate moods and underline social levels.

In the opening scene, the color coordination of the dress and car of Cary's best friend (the always enjoyable Agnes Moorehead) with the sky shows that she is woven into the patterns of the town- whereas Cary's red dress is a striking departure from that portrait.

Sirk is also fond of contrasting man's social structures with nature. As in Obsession and Written on the Wind (1956), nature is where we can explore our true selves outside of the ordered lives of our homes, families, and villages. The house that Hudson is planning for he and Cary is built in a rustic old mill- the site of toil and labor in a majestic forest setting. Nothing could be further from the staid, manicured life contained within her colonial home in town.

Todd Haynes used Heaven as a template for his Oscar-nominated film Far From Heaven (2002). Haynes goes one step further by making the gardener a black man, and his leading lady not a widow- but the rejected wife of a closeted gay man. But he uses much of the color technique that Sirk popularized to create a lush world that cloaks social truths in rich hues and idealized nature. It's yet another example of how classic films from the past inform and enrich the movies that directors make today.