Rating: 
Summary: The Best Picture Film Ever
Review: I love All That Heaven Allows.That movie taught me that gossip can be bad.I love Jane Wyman,Rock Hudson & Agnes Moorehead.They did a good job making this movie.My favorite charactars on this movie are Carrie Scott,Ron Kirby & Sara Warren.I think that All That Heaven Allows is a similar movie to The Magnicent Obsession.
Rating:
Summary: I'm totally psyched!
Review: I'm in my early 30's but I remember when I first saw this movie on AMC eight years ago. What compelled me to purchase this DVD (just 4 days ago) is the high melodrama and holiday elements. The colors in the movie are rich, the people in the movie are rich, the stretch from a real world (far from our modern one) where everyone is polished, everyone is far-out socially charged is just like watching a culture on a distant planet. It is an odd yet sweet movie. I wish AMC would play more classics like this movie, yet they seem to be running movies from the 1990's lately. Good for the DVD industry, though!
Rating:
Summary: I'm totally psyched!
Review: I'm in my early 30's but I remember when I first saw this movie on AMC eight years ago. What compelled me to purchase this DVD (just 4 days ago) is the high melodrama and holiday elements. The colors in the movie are rich, the people in the movie are rich, the stretch from a real world (far from our modern one) where everyone is polished, everyone is far-out socially charged is just like watching a culture on a distant planet. It is an odd yet sweet movie. I wish AMC would play more classics like this movie, yet they seem to be running movies from the 1990's lately. Good for the DVD industry, though!
Rating:
Summary: All the soap you can stomach.
Review: Probably the best soap-movie ever made; definitely the best movie from "subversive" director Douglas Sirk. *All That Heaven Allows* is about an attractive, upper middle-class widow (Jane Wyman, with repressed hairstyle to match her character) who, after having buried her husband, kept house for a couple of decades, and raised a couple of kids, decides that it's high time she had some sex. But there's not many men to choose from in her small bourgeois town. In fact, there's only two: the "obvious" choice is a wealthy old man who never has more than 1 cocktail per evening and natters on about his health. Yuck! That leaves the local gardener (Rock Hudson) as the only option, which suits the horny Wyman just fine: his lack of financial wherewithal is more than made up for by his matinee-idol good looks and, as Wyman's son later puts it, "big muscles". BUT -- oh DEAR! -- he's FIFTEEN YEARS YOUNGER than she is! Whatever shall we do? Obviously, call the Sex Police: her horrible children, fraught with Oedipal conflicts and sexual envy, are the primary detectives on the case, but indeed the whole town joins the posse. Her country club friends ostracize her . . . on it goes. As for Hudson's gardener, he's a living-like-Thoreau woodsy beatnik who has finally found the mother that he never had. There are several references to his father, but none to his mother: presumably he had one, but now that Wyman appropriates the role, the subject never comes up. Whew . . . obviously, gay men who are movie lovers have claimed this movie, and much of Sirk's oeuvre, as their own. (When Wyman, somewhat miffed, tells him that he seems to want her to be "just like a man", he replies, "Yes! Except in that one way." This movie outrageously combines Oedipal AND homosexual desire.) However, the rest of us can enjoy the subversion, the delirious Freudianisms, the eye-watering Pop Art color . . . and don't worry, dude, Martin Scorcese, maker of "cool" movies like *GoodFellas*, has championed this movie, so it's, like, cool to like it. All the sick ironies of the film culminate at the end, when a broken, incapacitated Hudson is hovered over and nursed by mommy Wyman, presumably forever. *All That Heaven Allows* is a must for melodrama lovers, queer-film theorists, and anyone who's into subversive cinema. [Criterion's DVD features a scatterbrained interview with the director from 1979. The picture quality, by the way, is simply amazing: Technicolor has never looked better . . . with the exception of Criterion's other Sirk release, *Written on the Wind*.]
Rating: 
Summary: An elegant, classy sudser from director Douglas Sirk
Review: Reuniting from the previous year's hit, "Magnificent Obsession", Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson play lovers torn apart by small town hypocrisy. Wyman is wealthy widow, Cary Scott. She falls in love with her gardener, Ron Kirby(Hudson),and is chastised by her community and loathed by her two grown children. Great, elegant melodrama from director-extraordinarre Douglas Sirk. The film starts off a bit slow, but the dramatic payoff is highly worth the wait. The cinematography, muisc, and dialogue all come together for a beautiful film event.
Rating:
Summary: An elegant, classy sudser from director Douglas Sirk
Review: Reuniting from the previous year's hit, "Magnificent Obsession", Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson play lovers torn apart by small town hypocrisy. Wyman is wealthy widow, Cary Scott. She falls in love with her gardener, Ron Kirby(Hudson),and is chastised by her community and loathed by her two grown children. Great, elegant melodrama from director-extraordinarre Douglas Sirk. The film starts off a bit slow, but the dramatic payoff is highly worth the wait. The cinematography, muisc, and dialogue all come together for a beautiful film event.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling film
Review: Social criticism masquerading as melodrama: this was always director Douglas Sirk's style, and "All That Heaven Allows" is one of the best expressions of his film world. The film was memorably remade twenty years later by Rainer Fassbinder as "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul," adding race to the volatile story of love encroaching across rigid class boundaries.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great romantic films! Underrated!
Review: This film is suprisingly romantic and highly emotional. It's something everyone can relate to - wondering what others will think of us when we buck convention. It is the story of a woman who must convince herself that she deserves to be happy, something that is often hard to do. The supporting cast is outstanding, especially Agnes Moorehead. Much better than the stupid, psychotic, overblown other Wyman-Hudson vehicle, Magnificent Obsession.
Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Slice of Melodrama
Review: This is a great film that you will be able to laugh at for all its pure melodramatic simplicity and at the same time despair over the loveable characters and tragic situations portrayed. You have to wonder at a time that could be so innocent that it all ever came down to whether or not the boy and girl get together. The dialogue is rich with subtext and you'll see all the glorious complexities of tense gender relations and homoerotic subplot working unbeknownst right in front of the character's eyes. Of course, the idyllic Thoreauean life vs comfortable suburban existence is weak, but you can't expect much more in a melodrama. What's important is to maintain a humorous belief of the characters and their innocent struggle to be happy. The scene where the Wyman receives a television is one of the most heart-wrenching I've witnessed. It is a joyous and entertaining film.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great Classic May December Romances!
Review: This is a must have for the Hudson/Wyman fans. If you loved Magnificent Obsession, you will love All That Heaven Allows. It is the "Don't worry about what people around you think" message at it's best. Or as Thoreau would put it: "...If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer" The movie also delves into something that was once very taboo in the 1950's ... the May December Romance, with Jane Wyman very much playing the December part of the romance. Though in real life they were only 11 years apart, her screen presence and subtle undertones definitely lead you to think that they are almost twice that difference. The photography is beautiful..Technicolor has been and always will be my favorite color format. Douglas Sirk and Ross Hunter seemed to know how to play it up to it's best ... their signature trademark of color, architecture and the feel of "weather" truly stands out in this movie. (See also Imitation of life by Douglas Sirk and Ross Hunter, starring Lana Turner and John Gavin). Now for the one warning to those offended by "colorful language". The special features in this DVD includes a commentary by Rainer Werner Fassbinder which has quite a few of the "F" and "S" words. In my honest opinion, there is no need for that type of a commentary on a movie like this. If I had known that it was on this DVD in the format that it is, I would not have purchased it. I am in search of a pure copy of just the movie itself or maybe the movie and the Trailers and Vintage Lobby Cards. If you are offended by this type of language, skip that section of the DVD! Otherwise, enjoy this wonderful movie..and the two wonderful actors who brought it to our screens and into our hearts. Sincerely,
Patricia Jones
Clearwater FL
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