Douglas Sirk’s heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores, which follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock Hudson), marks the pinnacle of expressionistic Hollywood melodrama.

Cary Scott (Wyman) is a widow slowly emerging from mourning to embrace the world again, caught between the daredevil impulses which see her step out in gossip-generating, low-cut, crimson dresses, and her deep sense of propriety and responsibility to her children. When she rejects a marriage offer from an older man who promises her companionship and affection, it’s because she is drawn to her gardener, Ron (Hudson), who is impetuous, direct and opens wine bottles with his teeth. But when their 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.

A profoundly felt film about class and conformity in small-town America, everything you could want from a tumultuous melodrama is here. Imbuing nearly every shot with a vivid and distinct emotional tenor, with 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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