The liner notes say that film scholars have re-evaluated this movie and whereas they originally dismissed it as simply a generic (albeit good looking) tearjerker of a movie, it has now been declared as being really important for some reason. I can’t recall why we’ve gone ahead and moved this one from the “crap” pile to the “art” pile, but I am here to say that another re-evaluation of this film is in order and that upon further review, the new conventional wisdom is hereby ditched in favor of the old conventional wisdom with a some modifications.

I wouldn’t say that this movie is crap or anything, I would just say that its roots as a commercial cash-in vehicle are showing. Prior to this movie, stars Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson made Magnificent Obsession together. It made a ton of money, and since Hollywood back then hadn’t completely abandoned all pretense of originality, instead of making something like Magnificent Obsession 2 , they got another sad, love affair movie for these two and All That Heaven Allows was born.

Jane Wyman, looking every bit of her forty-plus years in the role, plays Cary Scott, an upper class dame that had her husband go and croak on her last year. He left her some money, a house, two snotty kids that are both young adults, an empty existence, and a hunky gardener played by Rock Hudson!

Before Rock can start planting his trees in Cary’s yard, the movie shows us the kind of pointless shell of a life that Cary has been living since her husband took the easy way out. She has a friend, the anvil-faced Agnes Moorehead (Endora from Bewitched) and she seems to like Cary as much as anyone, but we soon see that friendship in this little upper crust town is premised on everyone acting like they are supposed to. This means going out to the country club, enduring dull parties with self-important gossips, and dating old guys that have never heard of Viagra.

Cary is one of those smart, red-headed gals, so she’s looking for more out of life than listening to her Methuselah-aged male companion go on and on about his health problems. She is looking for passion in her life, but her date is talking about how just being together is enough and that passion is something for younger people and it’s no wonder that she doesn’t invite him in for a nightcap.

It is obviously time to unleash the hunky gardener. Rock plays a landscape guy named Ron Kirby. Ron’s dad used to run the nursery that takes care of the town’s tree needs and when he died Ron took over. Ron is very tan and has perfectly sculpted hair that any normal landscaper would never wear because when you start sweating, you’d be blinded by all that pomade dripping into your smoldering brown eyes.

Cary offers Ron a little lunch and he decides he’ll have a little coffee and a few rolls and talk a little tree with Cary. It turns out that Ron really likes trees and that he is planning to quit the pruning business and go into the major leagues of the tree profession: growing them. Cary can see that this is a different sort of guy than she is used to hanging out with at the country club, chiefly because he is young and ruggedly handsome. Rock leaves and returns in a few weeks to hang out with her trees again and he offers to take her out to his place to get a gander at his trees (As long you keep that root in your pants, mister!). She declines, but at the last second, realizes that hunky gardeners probably have very nice trees and hops into his station wagon and it’s off to the very scenic countryside.

Like most hunky gardeners that dream of one day growing their very own trees, he has a really cool piece of property in the wilderness, complete with creek and scenic old mill. Cary and Ron hang out at the old mill awhile and Cary conveniently falls down some stairs right into Ron’s burly arms. Some suckface follows and we now have our selves a bona fide love affair. We get to know Ron a little and he’s one of those guys that is supremely confident and not at all moved by money or concerned with what anyone thinks of him. He has a whole raft of eclectic friends that raise trees, beekeep, watch birds and do artsy fartsy things that show they are likewise independent thinkers. We even get a scene where Cary is reading out loud from Walden by Thoreau about stuff like different drummers and roads less traveled or doing your own thing and tuning in and dropping out – you know all that hippie jive about laying around getting high while your old man pays for your tuition.

Ron starts fixing up the old mill into a really plush crib for he and his old lady and he asks her to marry him. She agrees and returns home to tell her kids the news. They think she’s getting married to the old guy and are surprised to find out that it is in fact the hunky gardener! In fact, the kids immediately put the kibosh on it with the son telling his mother that he is putting her on suspension until she goes back to dating men that are old enough to be her grandfather and the daughter is so upset by what the townspeople are saying that she made a scene at the library and was asked to leave!

But most of her friends are supportive, right? Well, the problem with having friends that are only interested in status and appearances and shoveling as much verbal dirt as possible is that they aren’t the most understanding or open minded of folks. Cary decides that if she brings Ron to a cocktail party at the country club that everyone will be won over by him and he will be accepted. Is there anyone, no matter how naived or widowed, out there that thinks these people have any inclination to be won over to anything?

Everyone at the party anxiously awaits their arrival and when they finally get there, they make a bunch of catty comments and one guy even hits on Cary, prompting Ron to display the closest thing to an emotion we get to see in this movie: he stares at this guy and tells him that he better not get out of his chair. At this point, Cary and Ron depart the premises, leaving everyone to talk. (Keep in mind that this is a town where even the butcher tries to mind your business about where you were all weekend!)

With the town, and more importantly, her kids dumping on her, the only thing left for Cary to do is dump Ron. Ron is a bit miffed about this, but still uses the opportunity to deliver one of his little be-your-own-woman speeches he’s fond of giving every chance he gets. He does a lot of that verbal word play that ignorant types mistake for vast wisdom. Stuff like when Cary says that he’s forcing her to choose between the children and him and he comes back with, “it is you that thinks it is a choice, therefore you should make it.” Whoa, that’s both productive and smart! So she chooses her kids. Have fun snuggling with your trees, Ronnie! At least you’re still all independent and stuff!

But dang it, for all their differences (he’s a rugged individualist who has all the answers, she’s a mindless sheep worried that the town gossip won’t like her hubby) these two kids still love each other and desperately want to get back together, but each of them is too proud to go to the other. So how do they get back together? Why tragedy of course!

First of all, her kids tell her that now that she’s dumped her true love, they’re going off to live their own lives. Then Cary goes up to see Ron (after a pep talk from your friendly neighborhood doctor), but he’s out in the woods hunting and she changes her mind before she sees him and drives off. Ron sees this and starts hooting and hollering and wouldn’t you know it, he falls off a cliff while doing this! He lands in a heap on a snow pile below and the whole thing was so ridiculously melodramatic that I was laughing. (Oh my god! They were so close to getting back together and then he fell off a cliff! Is this a cartoon?)

Ron’s pals tell Cary he’s hurt, she goes to see him at his place and sees what a kick ass job he’s done fixing up the old mill and decides to stay with him no matter what the country club people say! I think it’s fair to say that subtlety isn’t this movie’s strong point, but that oversimplifying things is. From Cary’s kids’ unreasonable reactions to her new romance, to her so willingly ditching a guy she loves, to Ron’s smug form of faux-enlightenment, the movie presents the idea of an unconventional relationship with the same primary colors that Sirk used to shoot his movie in.

There aren’t any shades of grey in this movie. The kids suck, then the daughter changes her mind completely, the entire town exists solely to keep Cary a grieving widow forever (except for the kindly doctor that exists solely to give her fatherly advice), and Ron the Hunky Gardener isn’t so much a fleshed out character as he is the idealized version of what it is to be a real man (hunt, woodwork, play piano, always be right). Rock also emotes in a distant monotone which only enhances the feeling that this is a man not from anywhere we’ve ever been on this planet.

Technically the film is a marvel to look it, the framing of the shots and the colors betray the hand of someone that knows how to shoot movie stars. I think Sirk even made some comments in some of the supplementary materials that the script wasn’t anything to write home about, but he tried to add his touch as a director to it so that it wouldn’t be the trash it probably was. I think that’s a fair assessment of things. This is a movie that as I was watching, I enjoyed looking at it, but kept wishing it was better, that it took some more chances and that it didn’t resort to the cheap falling-off-the-cliff finish. For my money, the better “old lady finds love and heartache” movie is the David Lean directed flick, Summertime with Katherine Hepburn. It’s full of uncomfortable moments and people that are all too prone to human missteps. In All That Heaven Allows, the only misstep these characters suffered from was when Rock walked off that snowy bluff.

© 2008 MonsterHunter