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Walden in the Suburbs: Thoreau, Rock Hudson, and Natural Style in Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows

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Walden in the Suburbs: Thoreau, Rock Hudson, and Natural Style in Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows CHAPTER TWO WALDEN IN THE SUBURBS: THOREAU, ROCK HUDSON, AND NATURAL STYLE IN DOUGLAS SIRK'S ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS DONNA CAMPBELL In The Bel/Jar, Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel of the 1950s, her lt~·roine Esther Greenwood announces at one point " I hate Technicolor" (41) because of its " lurid costumes" and the way in which characters tend " lo stand around like a clotheshorse with a lot of very green trees or very yellow wheat or very blue ocean rolling away for miles and miles in every direction" (43). Esther's comment is important because it signals her tmdcrstanding of the essential disconnection between Hollywood's images or a placid, prosperous J 950s and the reality of suicidal despair that she and others with artistic temperaments confronted in a culture determined lo deny such feelings. ln the hands of a great director like Douglas Sirk ( 11>00-19g7), however, the seeming tension between a glossy Technicolor :-o urface and the despair-laden depths beneath become in themselves the Huhjcct of the film, an instance of meaning conveyed through the seeming disjuncture of film style and substance. ln none of Sirk's films is this ntclhod of expression more evident than in a group of domestic dramas he 111ade at Universal Studios in the 1950s: Magn(ficent Obsession ( 1954), :Ill That Heaven Allows ( 1955), Written on the Wind ( 1956), and imitation o/ U/e ( 1959). In their solemn blend of extravagant, near-kitsch style with the themes of classic drama and melodrama, each offers a window into Sit-k 'sat once admiring and ironic take on U.S. culture. Ofthis group, A!/ Jlwt Heaven Allows stands alone as the most celebratory, and the most nilical, of Sirk's visions of the United States, because it echoes the work or Thoreau in its characters, themes, settings, and visual style. In choosing Thoreau's philosophy as his model, and in casting a Thoreau figure as his 30 Chapter Two Modern and Postrnodcrn Cutting Edge Films 31 hero, Si.rk posits a redemptive, if flawed, prescription f(>r rescuing one wcnring a red dress, and predatory married men like Howard Hoffer woman tn the suburbs, and by extension others in a similar situation from ( Unnald Curtis), who sexually assaults and propositions her. By contrast, the arid artificiality of 1950's culture. ' \is its to Ron's world show Cary the vibrant lite that she has been missing. ,II.. ~ she travels to the old mill and tree nursery where Ron lives and to the All That He~ven ~/lows is the story of Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), a trl·e farm of his friends Mick and Alida Anderson, who dwell in well-to-do forty1sh w1dow who is not yet ready to retreat to the somnolent urrpr~.-~tentious simplicity, Cary tlllls in love with Ron 's way of life as she comfort of the television set, despite the insistence of her friends that it is ralls in love with him. During a vi sit to the Andersons' home, Cary finds a the best refuge for lonely women. As the film opens, Cary's best friend, h1111k that Alida tells her is the key to happiness and to understanding Sara (Agnes Moorehead), stops by her white Colonial-style house to return ){on 's inner peace: Henry David Thoreau's Walden. The scene is a Cary's dishes and say that she cannot stay for lunch. As Rainer Werner turning point in the film, tor Cary only then awakens to the possibilities of F~ss.?inder de.scr!,bes the s~ene in his influential "Six Films by Douglas 11 new way of life, one not bounded by the country dub and its rigid S1rk • there 1s A travelmg shot past the two of them, and in the protocols of behavior. Strengthened by her Jove for Ron and his background stands Rock Hudson, as an extra would stand there in a Thorcauvian ways, Cary bravely defies the gossip of the country club set H?llywood film. And because the friend can't stay tor a cup of coffee arl(l agrees to marry him. She shrugs off Sara's arguments about Ron's With Jane, Jane has coffee with the extra" (Fassbinder 97). Rock HutJson lower social class, his lack of wealth, and the age difference between "th~ extra," plays R.on Kirby, the nurseryman who cares for Cary's trees: them, but she cannot easily shrug off the objections of her monstrously Unlike Cary, who IS at a loss for occupation because her children are scllish children. As Jon Halliday notes, in Sirk's tilms children "are to be gro~n and she is "not a clubwoman" like Sara, he is passionate about his seen not as the new generation, but as the imitators of the old, the calling. When she asks about the trees at her house, he tells Cary that she perpetuators of tradition and repression" ("All That Heaven Allows" 61 ). ha~ a ra.re Koelreuteria or Goldenrain tree, which according to legend onl Sacriticing her own happiness for their demands, she breaks off her thnves m a hou_se wh~re tl~ere is love. He clips off a branch and gives it t~ errgagement to Ron only to see them leave home and ignore her, leaving l~er: . the. ~rst ot. a sene~ o~ natural, meaningful git1s that contrast with the her with nothing but a television set for company. ~te1 lie fnendslup, as s1gmfied by the empty dishes, that others ofter her. fhe film develops through a series of such contrasts: in the very next In giving up Ron and seeming to settle for the television set, Cary has scene, Cary ~ooks at the golden branch, glowing with Technicolor radiance heen defeated by her children, because they have consigned her to a ~n . her dressmg t~bl. e, before turning into the darkness to greet her grown simulacrum of life rather than the real life she could have led with Ron. d1~ldren Ned (WIIIJam Reynolds) and Kay (Gloria Talbot). Both seem Ihrl if her mind has acceded to their demands, her heart and body have not: qu1te. happy to see Cary remaining in this darkness, entombed in her role repressing her feelings has given Cary migraine headaches. Consulting as w~dow and mother. Kay tells her that according to Freud "sex after a her friend and doctor, Dan Hennessy (Hayden Rourke), Cary learns that ce~tam ~ge becomes incongruous."' Following his sister's lead, Ned sire is punishing herself for her pointless self-sacrifice and lack of love. vo1ces Ius a~proval tl~at his mother's date for a cocktail party at the /\s Fassbinder puts it more bluntly, "Jane goes back to Rock because she ~O.un.~r~ club 1.s the.a~~1ent an~ sexless Harvey, who tells Cary that at her has headaches, which is what happens to us all if we don't fuck once in a c~ge, compamonsh1p 1s more Important than romance. while" (97). A chance meeting with Alida convinces Cary that Ron is still J'ree and waiting for her, and she happily drives out to the mill once more. Th~ antinomie~ conti~ue as Cary is pulled between the vitality, Because this is a melodrama, however, more suffering and expiation must ~ex~mhty, and genume feelmg that Ron represents and the artificial, death­ ensue betore the lovers can be reunited. In a series of coincidences that m-hfe atmosp~ere .of the u~per middle-class represented by Harvey. Sirk echo and reverse Cary's previous trips to the mill, this time Ron is out re1_1d.ers these mtenor confl1~ts vi~ually through repeated scenes of Cary hunting instead of waiting to welcome her. Having second . thou~~ts , she dnvmg bet~een the symbolic settmgs that represent the different worlds. 1urns her car around and drives away, unaware that Ron, 111 ha1lmg her At the Stonmgham Country Club. Cary confronts the vicious world of J'rom the snowy top of a cliff, has fallen into a snow bank and sustained a catty gossips like Mona Plash (Jacqueline De Wit), who insults Cary for concussion. Informed of his accident by Alida, Cary travels to the mill for 32 Chapter Two Modem and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films 33 IV\.'t:nlly. critical perspectives on Todd Haynes's 2002 Far .fi'om Heaven. the last time, this time to watch over him as he recovers and to reassure 1 him that she has "come home" at last. The surface level of the ending un acknowledged homage to Sirk's All That /-leaven Allows: As Barbara suggests that the two lovers leave behind the artificial and lifeless world of Kling~:r shows in her reception study of Sirk's work, Melodrama and the suburban town, aptly named Stoningham, for the forces of lite that Aft ·,111i11g: HistOIJ', Culture, and the Films (Jf'Douglas Sirk. the meanings Ron represents, yet as Fassbinder remarks, Cary may "miss the style of of' Si1"k 's tilms have changed with the ideological positions of critics in life she is used to and which has become her own. That's why the happy ~·at:h dccude: they have been "historically characterized as subversive, ending is not one" (97). udult. trash, classic, camp, and vehicles of gender definition" (xv). l kspitc their disagreements about the tilms' meanings, critics have As even this brief summary of the plot suggests, All That /-leaven \:onsislcnlly identified certain elements as classically Sirkian in style, Allows operates on multiple levels, complying with yet undercutting the induding "pessimistic themes, artificial mise-en-scene, distance, self­ principles of melodrama as it both delivers and withholds the expected rdkxivity, and false happy ends" (Klinger 12).
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