All That Heaven Allows

All That Heaven Allows is a 1955 romance directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead and Gloria Talbott. I don't tend to like romances or melodramas, but this film is wonderful. It has a sweet touch.

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It influenced the making of the Fassbinder film Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. It's on Martin Scorsese's film school list. Slant Magazine gives it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars and calls it " the most influential of the 20-plus films Sirk directed during the 1950s". DVD Talk calls it "a slyly subversive romantic melodrama" and closes by saying,

this is one of those films best appreciated when today's normally jaded, cynical audience permit themselves to surrender completely to its heavily-stylized dramatics. Taken that way, All That Heaven Allows is still emotionally powerful stuff with a lot to say about the American middle-class than most first realized. It's one of the best films of the 1950s...

FilmReference.com says,

Although the formal aspects of Sirk's work led to the initial critical attention, his films, as melodramas, have been equally of interest to the concerns of feminist film criticism. As an analysis of a middle-class woman's oppression, All That Heaven Allows is an extremely powerful statement.

Rotten Tomatoes has a 93% critics rating.