Best Shot Index: 'All That Heaven Allows'

We revived the long dormant "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" club last week with Nightmare Alley and tonight the film is Douglas Sirk's melodrama All That Heaven Allows (1955). It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HIGHLY recommended. The drama features Jane Wyman as a New England widow and Rock Hudson as the younger gardener she falls for. He doesn't care much for societal expectations but she's awfully concerned about what her neighbors and grown children think. While the film was underappreciated in its time (zero Oscar nominations for this beauty?!) it has since grown into being an influential classic, famously homaged in Far From Heaven (2002). (Each week on Best Shot anyone who would like to join is welcome to post their choice for the chosen film. We'll add more shots if any more come in.)

Click on these "Best Shots" to see why these players chose it...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

by Nathaniel R

Cary: I suppose these old beams are rotted.
Ron: No they're oak. They're good for another 100 years

Do any of you remember that short burst of retro Douglas Sirk-enthusiasm in 2002? Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon (all of whom cite Sirk as an influence) all had new very stylized films out, and the lost art of melodrama was suddenly in the air and being discussed. Sirk was briefly exalted (especially in Haynes' Far From Heaven, a direct homage to All That Heaven Allows our topic today). Those were good times. It should happen every few years, trotting Sirk back out again, to marvel at his gifts.

Realism has not always been the most prized end-game of art, but for most of our lives the consensus, from critics audiences and awards bodies has wildly favoured it. Give us something real and gritty! Melodrama, then, is a hard ask for many moviegoers though we've never understood why...

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Because you kept asking for it...

"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" returns February 17th for a four episode trial run. If we get participation we'll keep going so we hope you'll join us. If you're new, consider it like a weekly film club. You

1) watch the movie
2) pick your favourite shot (whatever you think is "best" however you would define that)
3) post it, with or without an explanation wherever you play online #bestshot
4) see our own choice right here and discuss!

The schedule is after the jump...

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Link on, Pete

• Vanity Fair Johnny Depp still having legal/financial woes. Being sued again
• IndieWire very thorough wide ranging interview with Vincent Maraval of the French movie production company Wild Bunch and how the arthouse market and Cannes have changed
• IndieWire from the sounds of this article on the visual FX work in Infinity War, the Oscar campaign is already in effect!
• MUBI Notebook a reprint of a 1972 essay about Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows when it was being reevaluated
• Film School Rejects Black Panther blu-ray review

• Gr8er Days awww, i missed this news about Carol Burnett's would be new sitcom, she backed out when the suits wanted a less unique show
• THR Jeffrey Tambor's first interview since being fired from Transparent
• /Film In unneccessary sequels with bad titles news: The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard is coming
• Dread Central Ana Lily Armirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Bad Batch) has annnounced her next film: Blood Moon set in New Orleans
• NYT Ermanno Olmi, director of Cannes-winner Tree of Wooden Clogs dies
• The Guardian an interview with Chloe Sevigny about her 'Queen of the Scene' past, being in her 40s now, why she didn't name names with the Me Too movement, and her new role in Lean on Pete
• IndieWire CinemaScore gets super touchy about Martin Scorsese saying that their polling devalues cinema
• The Hollywood Reporter on CW's renewed and cancelled shows

Offscreen
• The Atlantic "I'm not Black, I'm Kanye" a devastating piece by Ta Nehisi Coates on all sorts of things including: Michael Jackson, Kanye West, the 1980s, and American history.
• Deadline Olivia de Havilland trying to keep her Feud lawsuit alives. Has appealed the ruling against her
• Playbill Meet the cast of Broadway's Moulin Rouge!

What's your favorite Jane Wyman?

It's Jane Wyman's Centennial.  The actress was born on this day in Missouri in 1917 as Sara Jane Mayfield.

Like many major stars her legacy rests on a period that's only about a decade long -- in Wyman's case the mid 40s through the 50s, or more specifically the Best Picture winner The Lost Weekend (1945) through the Douglas Sirk classic All that Heaven Allows (1955) a period in which she specialized in childlike women and their inverse young widows-- but her career was long, stretching from bit parts in the early 30s through TV stardom in the 80s.

Her greatest hits and Oscar triumphs after the jump. Which is your favorite?

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