Douglas Sirk’s heartbreakingly beautiful film about class and conformity in 1950s small-town America marks the pinnacle of expressionistic Hollywood melodrama.

Well-off widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) emerges from mourning to embrace the world again and finds herself drawn to her handsome yet impetuous gardener, Ron (Hudson). But when their blossoming romance prompts the scorn of her children and country club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others.

In All that Heaven Allows, Sirk proved that there was an artistry and glory in the melodrama genre that never had to apologise for itself - not when it was this confident, this beautiful, and this good.

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