Love Story – Bitch Flicks

Love and Freedom in The Eisenhower Years: ‘All That Heaven Allows’

But ‘All That Heaven Allows’ is not just a good-looking, affecting melodrama. It can be enjoyed on many different levels. In both indirect and observable ways, Sirk’s weepie targets oppressive aspects of post-war America. For some time now, both film critics and scholars have, understandably, foregrounded the socio-political uses of Sirk’s powerful, immoderate film-making style, as well as the subversive elements in his melodramas. They, in fact, invite socially and gender-aware readings.

Poster for All That Heaven Allows — Poster for *All That Heaven Allows*

Written by Rachael Johnson.

Directed by Douglas Sirk, All That Heaven Allows (1955) tells the romantic tale of Carrie Scott (Jane Wyman), an attractive, wealthy middle-aged widow who falls in love with a young landscape gardener. The object of her affection, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), is a handsome, brawny man in his late 20s or early 30s. He is the very opposite of Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a dull, older suitor Carrie politely tolerates. Carrie, in fact, spends a lot of her time alone although she has two grown children, Ned and Kay. Kay (Gloria Talbott) is a geeky, pretty social work student who loves to share her interest in psychoanalysis with others, even with her dim, sporty boyfriend. As with most ’50s American films, her intelligence is indicated by spectacles. Her brother, immaculately attired, handsome Ned (William Reynolds), loves to make martinis and control people. The other important person in Carrie’s life is her best friend Sara (Agnes Moorehead). She is a bit of a snob but comparatively nicer than the rest of the country club types who populate Carrie’s social life.

Ron Kirby comes from a very different world. He leads a natural, comparatively free, non-consumerist life in the woods. His friends are bohemian types and they too have renounced the reigning materialistic ethos of their place and time. When Carrie is introduced to them, she revels in their warm, unaffected ways. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t turn out too well when Carrie presents Ron to her friends, after announcing their plans to marry. When they’re not disparaging his tan or calling him “Nature Boy” behind his back, they’re mocking his socioeconomic status, and lack of materialistic ambition. It is the children, however, who will force Carrie to give up Ron, for the sake of family, propriety and property. She sacrifices her love for him for her children and convention but soon comes to regret it. Kay becomes engaged and Ned, hoping to study in Paris and work overseas, thinks it would be better to sell the house as it would be too big for his mother. As Carrie acknowledges, “The whole thing’s been so pointless.” A near-tragedy, however, thankfully brings the lovers back together in the end.

All That Heaven Allows is a deeply involving, and satisfying love story. Love stories are always, of course, more powerful when the lovers are faced with barriers to love, and when the romantic and erotic ache is painfully but pleasurably acute. Sirk provides a potent emotional and sensorial experience with All That Heaven Allows. Filmed in Technicolor, the hues of both the natural and human-made objects on the screen have a gorgeous, Expressionist intensity. Some of the film’s images are both over-the-top and wondrous. There is even a Disneysque deer that Ron feeds in winter. True to melodramatic form, he falls off a cliff, and suffers a concussion just when you think the lovers are on the verge of a reunion. All That Heaven Allows has, also, more subtle moments and images, in terms of narrative and style. Sirk’s mastery of shot composition is, equally, always evident.

But All That Heaven Allows is not just a good-looking, affecting melodrama. It can be enjoyed on many different levels. In both indirect and observable ways, Sirk’s weepie targets oppressive aspects of post-war America. For some time now, both film critics and scholars have, understandably, foregrounded the socio-political uses of Sirk’s powerful, immoderate film-making style, as well as the subversive elements in his melodramas. They, in fact, invite socially and gender-aware readings. Filmmakers too, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes have also found Sirk’s work stimulating and inspiring. Far From Heaven (2002) and Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974) both draw from All That Heaven Allows.

All That Heaven Allows can be interpreted, and enjoyed, as an empathetic critique of female alienation in post-war America. Carrie is presented as the ideal, upper middle-class WASP woman of the ’50s–elegant, gracious, attractive, but not too sexual, as well as, of course, loving and maternal. But there is something missing. Carrie feels empty and trapped. Lifeless even. The metaphor that describes her state is first used by her daughter earlier on in the movie when she marvels at the stylish, comparatively sexy red dress her mother puts on for a date with Harvey. Her mother should enjoy herself, she asserts, before elaborating: “Personally I’ve never subscribed to that old Egyptian custom of walling up the widow alive in the funeral chamber of her dead husband along with his other possessions.” Kay will, of course, contribute to her mother’s metaphorical walling-up later on. It’s an Orientalist image, of course, but it’s used here to criticize post-war American patriarchy, particularly its puritan need to control female sexuality. When Kay adds that the custom does not exist anymore, her mother quietly replies, “Well perhaps not in Egypt.”

People–both men and women–make deeply personal, gendered assumptions about Carrie. In fact, they’re constantly telling her what she feels and what she wants. Men try to control her sexuality. Even harmless, old Harvey feels he has the right to tell her that she doesn’t really want romance at this stage. “I’m sure you feel as I do that companionship and affection are the important things,” he says. Her own son tries to regulate her sexuality. When Ned first sees that red dress, he tellingly remarks that it’s “cut kind of low.” More on him later. As the sexual target of a sleazy, married man, Carrie is also the object of more demonstratively misogynist control.

All That Heaven Allows takes aim at the nuclear family too. The grown-up kids are appalling. Her daughter thinks she’s hip but she’s as cowardly and conventional as the rest of Carrie’s loved ones. Ned’s a controlling, priggish prick. Kay does apologize for her behavior in the end but even so. In fact, the more you reflect on their efforts to shape their mother’s fate, the more sinister they seem. Her love for Ron represents a new start, a new life, new experiences, but they want her to give up her happiness and surrender her very self. The nuclear family–trumpeted in the ’50s (and even today)–as the be-all-and-end-all of human social units–is shown to be a sick little institution. Her son wants to the kill the love and desire his mother has for this tall, handsome, younger man. Kay playfully alludes to her brother’s Oedipal complex but he’s the real deal. Ned is outraged that his mother’s mate, and potential step-father, is “a good-looking set of muscles.” Ned buys a big-screen TV for Carrie. The television means safe, comfy company, of course. The message is clear: Get your slippers on, Mom, and watch The Ed Sullivan Show. No more pleasure, no more drama, no more love for you. Sit back and sacrifice your life. Watch other people living theirs. He may be young but he’s a true blue patriarchal asshole in the making. He’s also a zealot of the dominant consumerist, classist order.

All That Heaven Allows does address and critique American materialism and classism in a considerably direct fashion. The United States was fast becoming an unapologetically consumerist society in the ’50s. It is what drives nearly everyone around Carrie–apart from Ron and his happy lot. His lack of interest in money is the subject of conversation of the country club set. In his world, Carrie learns about another way of living. The materialist, consumerist life is clearly understood here as a conformist trap. Their spiritual guide is Thoreau. Carrie’s situation is particularly interesting, of course. She is the embodiment of privilege and the ideal consumer, but something is not right. Her alienation is spiritual as well as gender-specific. She is attracted to a different way of being. She does not just fall in love with Ron; she falls in love with his world too.

It’s a pleasurable sport analysing the socially subversive elements in All That Heaven Allows. What’s equally interesting, and gratifying, is spotting, and reflecting on, the historical setting, what is obscured and what is unsaid. The first time I watched it, my thoughts drifted, now and again, to what was going on in America and the world in the mid-fifties. The decade is generally described as a period of confidence and prosperity for America. For White America that is. For Black Americans, it was another story, of course. All That Heaven Allows was released in 1955. It was the year that 14-year-old Emmett Hill was murdered and mutilated in Mississippi and the year that Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks protested bus segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama. Carrie’s peers do not speak of race. They are not only complacent, narrow-minded products of their age and class; they are also profoundly insular and provincial. There is no talk of Russia and the Cold War either. They are blind to their own nation’s troubles and seem ignorant of the U.S. government’s neo-imperialist involvements in other lands. It is an interesting, yet unsurprising, thing that Ned plans to take up a post in Iran following his Paris scholarship. The American government had already, in fact, paved the way for him. In 1953, the CIA, and the British, got the democratically-elected leader of Iran, Mohammed Mossadeq, ousted in an engineered coup. (He had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian oil company). The CIA finally admitted to its involvement in 2013. You just know Ned’s real-life version would go on to do very well for himself in the latter part of the 20th century. The unthinking, self-interested corporate type Ned represents is the future.

There is so much else to contemplate and admire in All That Heaven Allows. Jane Wyman gives an exquisite performance as Carrie. It’s a deeply sensitive, insightful portrayal, and we empathise entirely with our heroine’s situation. Wyman conveys her joys and fears beautifully, both the stabs of jealousy Carrie suffers when she fears Ron desires another woman, as well as the feelings of excitement she has when experiencing another way of life for the first time. Rock Hudson is less interesting but charming, and handsome all the same. Most crucially, he represents the promise of something new. The lovers are both good and gracious people, and the actors effectively capture their nobility and kindness as well as the gentle, tender nature of their love. Wyman and Hudson have considerable chemistry. Incidentally, All That Heaven Allows wasn’t the first time the actors had worked together in a Sirk movie. They had been successfully paired the previous year in Magnificent Obsession (1954).

All That Heaven Allows is also ravishing to look at. Visually, it is both intense and inventive. There are some pretty arresting images. Perhaps the most striking, and disturbing is that television Carrie’s kids buys for her. It may be the ultimate symbol of American consumerism and modernity in the mid-fifties but it quite horrifically embodies materialism, conformity, and alienation in All That Heaven Allows. It’s no exaggeration to say that for Carrie it represents a death-in-life existence. It is no less a symbol of oppression and mortality than the Egyptian widow’s tomb Kay talks about earlier in the movie. Although she has to surmount obstacles of convention and chance, Carrie will, thankfully, in the end, resist its darkness. For In All That Heaven Allows, female romantic love is a form of light, liberation, and resistance.

The Sex Worker and The Corporate Raider: Dissecting ‘Pretty Woman’

‘Pretty Woman’ depicts a world where everyone is either a card-carrying member of the corporate caste or an obliging subordinate whose primary purpose in life is to serve, drive or blow members of that caste. It is obsessed with things and encourages the audience to share its obsession with things. These include Lotus cars, jets and jewelry. It also sells the City of Angels, of course. Rodeo Drive is one of the stars of the show. In fact, the whole movie is pretty much an extended Visit California commercial.

Pretty Woman (1990) — *Pretty Woman* (1990)

Garry Marshall’s romantic comedy, Pretty Woman, is one of the most popular American movies of all time. A box office success when it was released in 1990, it still rates highly in those Greatest Romantic Comedy lists. Audiences all around the world have embraced Pretty Woman’s buoyant tone, pop soundtrack, Hollywood setting, and fairy-tale love story. The lovers, Edward Lewis and Vivian Ward, make an unlikely couple, of course. He is a wildly successful businessman and she is a hard-up street prostitute. The meet-cute takes place on Hollywood Boulevard. Both lovers have looks and personality, and both are portrayed as engaging and sympathetic. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere give winning movie star performances as the pair. The mass popularity of the love story is, no doubt, due, in great part, to the attractiveness of the stars and the appeal of the characters. Their love is, also, habitually read as perfectly romantic because it seems to transcend all differences.

This is not my Pretty Woman, though. The movie I recognize is a glossy yet insidious Hollywood product that seeks to convince viewers that street prostitutes are eternally radiant and movie star beautiful, and that their corporate clients are all gracious and movie star handsome. I’m not sure that there is a film out there that has sanitized and romanticized prostitution as much as Pretty Woman. The clear intention of the movie-makers is to drug and delude the audience. Music, beauty and fashion serve to seduce the viewer, and mask the fact that they are watching an impoverished street prostitute spend a week with an extremely wealthy man in his hotel room. In response to the question, “Isn’t it just a fairy tale?” we have to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a meaningless fairy tale. Nor is there such a thing as an apolitical Hollywood film. Pretty Woman may be a fantasy but it’s a deeply sexist, consumerist fantasy.

Julia Roberts’s Vivian does not have the aura of a street prostitute. She is way too sunny and sugary. Although she initially comes across as a trifle feisty and seasoned, the impression does not last. For the most part, the character looks and behaves like an ingénue. Actually, you never even believe the wild child introduction. Vivian’s best friend, Kit de Luca (Laura San Giacomo), is portrayed as earthier and less attractive because Vivian’s essential wholesomeness and beaming beauty must stand out (This is the function of best friends in Hollywood films, of course). Vivian is, in fact, nothing less than a 90s reworking of two of the oldest stereotypes in cinema and literature: the “whore with a heart of gold” and “happy hooker”. Our heroine smiles, sings and laughs throughout the movie with excessive dedication.

It is Vivian’s good-hearted, unaffected ways that enchant Edward, of course. He is smitten by both her spark and beauty. There is, though, a deeply disquieting edge to Edward’s appreciation of Vivian. The makers of Pretty Woman have no problem infantilising their heroine and there is a child-woman aspect to her character. For Edward, it is a vital part of her charm. In one signature scene, we watch him move closer to Vivian to gaze at her laughing gleefully at I Love Lucy rerun on the TV. It is telling that Vivian’s family name is Ward. She is like Edward’s ward. He cares for, nurtures, protects and spoils her. The age difference is both acknowledged and overcome. The kind hotel manager (Hector Elizondo) and Vivian come to an agreement that she is Edward’s “niece” if any guest asks. The age gap is recognized but it is not understood as a major obstacle to true love. Pretty Woman is, therefore, yet another perpetrator of that old Hollywood gender age gap rule. Roberts is nearly 20 years younger than Gere and they basically play their ages. The older man-younger woman intergenerational relationship is normalized and naturalized, and the underlying archaic message is that that a heterosexual relationship can only work if the man is significantly older than the woman. Edward’s not a partner; he’s a patriarch.

Pretty Woman is both sleazy and conservative. The first shot we have of Vivian is actually of her ass and crotch. We see her turn over in bed in her underwear. As she is not with a client but in her own single bed, in the run-down apartment she shares with Kit, the shot is only intended for the audience. It is, perhaps, the most explicit one in the film as the sex and love-making scenes between Edward and Vivian are neither graphic nor intense. We subsequently see her evade the landlord- she can’t afford the rent- by taking the fire escape route. Soon, she will be on Hollywood Boulevard conversing with Kit. The audience does not spend a lot of time with Vivian on her home turf. It is understood as a dangerous, seedy place but it is not depicted with any real grit or insight. The body of a dead woman has been found in an alley way dumpster but this is soon forgotten. Although Vivian is dressed for business in thigh-high boots, she cuts an incongruous, glamorous presence. However, thanks to a lost millionaire in a Lotus Esprit, the good, pretty woman will be magically transported from those streets in fairy-tale, Pygmalion fashion.

Although Vivian is an endearing pretty woman, she does not conform to class-sanctioned feminine styles and behavior. Cue the most famous makeover in modern movie history. To the tune of Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman,” Vivian is appropriately dressed and groomed for Edward’s perfumed world. Pretty Woman, unsurprisingly, patronizes its heroine. In the early part of the movie, at least, Vivian is portrayed as a wide-eyed hick from Georgia who spits out chewing gum on the sidewalk and (accidentally) flings escargots around restaurants. Fortunately, Edward is there to guide her. Note that he doesn’t only introduce her to snail-eating but he also takes her to polo matches and concerts. One evening, courtesy of his private jet, he whisks her off to San Francisco for a performance of La Traviata. “The music’s very powerful,” he helpfully notes.

Which brings us to Pretty Woman’s unashamedly antiquated and classist portrayal of Edward. The corporate raider is portrayed as an extremely cultured and intelligent man. He loves the opera, plays the piano, and reads Shakespeare. Pretty Woman does not only have a hilariously Hollywood, and frankly philistine, idea of what constitutes a cultured person but it also suggests that America’s astronomically wealthy are exceptionally intelligent and cultured. “You must be really smart, huh?” Vivian says to Edward, after he explains what he does for a living. This is one of the more mind-boggling messages of the movie.

Along with his tall and slender lover, Edward also embodies Pretty Woman’s lookist ethos. Handsome, self-assured and enormous successful, the businessman is seen as superior to other men. His lawyer (played by Jason Alexander), on the other hand, is a nasty, envious, little creep who attempts to rape Vivian at one point. True to the lookist philosophy of the movie, the scumbug character cannot be conventionally attractive or taller than our hero. In Garry Marshall’s fantasy Hollywood, beautiful equals good. But how good is Edward? The movie’s morality is, in fact, mystifying on many levels. Its hero doesn’t drink and or tolerate drug-taking but he has no problem with hiring out women or buying out companies.

Ideologically, Pretty Woman is a love song to consumerism and capitalism. Yes, Vivian gets to disparage Edward’s superficial, affluent social circle at the polo match: “No wonder why you came looking for me,” she observes sadly–and yes, Edward learns to temper his rapacious corporate ways under her gentle influence- he now wants to build stuff and not just deal in money- but this never destabilizes the system. In fact, the system is, arguably, made more secure through reform. Edward just realizes he shouldn’t be so much of a dick. Pretty Woman depicts a world where everyone is either a card-carrying member of the corporate caste or an obliging subordinate whose primary purpose in life is to serve, drive or blow members of that caste. It is obsessed with things and encourages the audience to share its obsession with things. These include Lotus cars, jets, and jewelry. It also sells the City of Angels, of course. Rodeo Drive is one of the stars of the show. In fact, the whole movie is pretty much an extended Visit California commercial. It does its job well, of course. It’s a sleek product. There are many cars, rooms, gowns and suits to admire. But it’s a sleek Hollywood product jam-packed with dazzling fictions and lies about everything under the sun.

The representation of gender and sexuality in Pretty Woman is equally seedy and reactionary. Prostitutes should be civilized and saved while young women should resign themselves to being sexually objectified. Vivian is, of course, portrayed as a deeply romantic being. When their week together is up, Edward offers to take her off the streets and set her up in an apartment. But Vivian refuses to be his mistress. “I want more…I want the fairy tale,” she says to Edward. We, the audience, are encouraged to see her as an all-American girl driven by the pursuit of happiness. But she is also, at the end of the day, a deeply conventional woman with very traditional aspirations. She gets the fairy tale, of course. But Pretty Woman’s not just a love story; it’s also about becoming the respectable partner of a businessmen. Vivian Ward may be a romantic, sympathetic figure but she is also a woman fated to marry well. They may have changed each other but Vivian is incorporated into Edward’s world. Her illicit sexuality must be contained. We see her appreciate Edward’s beauty in the quiet of the night, but we also see her take pleasure in expensive things that he has bought for her. There is a scene in Pretty Woman where we see Vivian go to back to a store on Rodeo Drive where she was previously snubbed and humiliated by snooty sales staff. Armed with gorgeous purchases and gorgeously attired, she reminds them of their “big mistake.” It’s intended as a crowd-cheering scene of course–we enjoy Vivian’s screw-you moment–but it also expresses an unquestioning acceptance of the Darwinian wealth equals power diktat. When she is finally saved by her prince at the end of the movie, Vivian vows that she will save Edward in return. Will she really be allowed to save him? Will she have a role of her own? Or will she just buy stuff on his credit card?

It would be hilarious if the whole enterprise was actually a send-up of sexual politics and consumerism. No such luck. There is not a whiff of subversion in Pretty Woman. Admire Julia and Richard’s beauty, and sing along to Orbison or Roxette, but never forget that it is one of the most misogynist, patriarchal, classist, consumerist, and lookist movies ever to come out of Hollywood.