Melodrama – 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.

Cookie and Co.: The Women of ‘Empire’

Fox’s midseason drama ‘Empire’ is a huge hit, and it is easy to see why. The gloriously soapy family melodrama is chockablock with “watercooler moments” (are those still a thing?), many provided by the series’s breakout character Cookie Lyon, played with obvious joy by Taraji P. Henson. But despite all the well-deserved attention Cookie is getting, she’s not the only great female character ‘Empire’ has to offer.

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

FOX’s midseason drama Empire is a huge hit, and it is easy to see why. The gloriously soapy family melodrama is chockablock with “watercooler moments” (are those still a thing?), many provided by the series’s breakout character Cookie Lyon, played with obvious joy by Taraji P. Henson.

Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon in 'Empire' — Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon in *Empire*

Cookie, the ex-wife of legendary hip hop mogul Lucious Lyon (and mother the three sons vying to inherit his empire), has just been released from a 17-year stint in prison. She co-founded the company (somewhat clunkily called Empire) with Lucious, and wants the riches, fame, and power she was denied when she took the fall for the drug dealing that financed the company in its early days. Surrounded by schemers, Cookie in contrast works to get what she wants by sheer force of will. And an abundance of charisma floating on her fearlessness, brazenness, and enviable style. Cookie is glorious.

Despite all the well-deserved attention Cookie is getting, she’s not the only great female character Empire has to offer. This is a refreshing surprise, given co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong (the same creative team behind The Butler, a movie I loved) pitch the series as “King Lear in the hip hop world,” but swapped daughters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia for sons. These sons are all compelling characters: business-focused Andre, struggling with bipolar disorder; and promising artists Jamal, whose favor with Lucious is challenged by his homosexuality; and Hakeem, whose favor with Lucious is challenged by his tendency to be a little shit. And it does seem more true to the character of Lucious to want to leave his legacy in the hands of a male heir. But part of me will always be disappointed we couldn’t have female versions of Andre, Jamal, and Hakeem.

But, as I said, Empire still delivers a range of complex female characters to love and love to hate.

Anika (Grace Gealy) is "a bitch who can slice your throat without even disturbing her pearls" — Anika (Grace Gealy) is “a ho who can slice your throat without even disturbing her pearls”

Anika (Grace Gealy), is head of Empire A&R and Lucious’s new woman. Anika and Cookie immediately strike up a fierce rivalry, first for power in the company (Anika backing Hakeem’s rising star, Cookie pushing for Jamal), and inevitably for Lucious’s affections. The rivalry works because each woman is equally savvy, but with opposing styles: where Cookie is all unbridled assertiveness, Anika is cool-headed and graceful even at her most sinister. It’s pretty much impossible not to root for Cookie, but Anika commands respect as a worthy opponent.

Kaitlin Doubleday as Rhonda in 'Empire' — Kaitlin Doubleday as Rhonda in *Empire*

Another schemer is Andre’s wife Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday), who also lusts for power through the proxy of her husband. Rhonda at first seems completely unsympathetic, seeking to put Jamal and Hakeem “at war” with each other to benefit Andre. The Lyon family find Rhonda inherently suspect because she’s a highly educated upper class white woman. When Andre defends his wife as “brilliant,” Cookie responds “Pretty white girls always are, even when they ain’t.” Lucious straight-up tells Andre, “the moment you brought that white woman into my house, I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew then that you didn’t want to be part of my family.” But Rhonda truly cares for Andre and is in many ways a good match for him (as he also has a mind for business). And her alternating support of and frustration with her mentally ill partner shows her at her most genuine.

Lucious (Terrence Howard) being typically dismissive of his assistant Becky (Gabourey Sidibe)

While not major characters, I would be remiss not to mention Lucious and Cookie’s all-star assistants. Gabourey Sidibe plays Becky, Lucious’s long-suffering but resilient PA. Becky expertly anticipates Lucious’s needs and exudes stunning patience with his routine dismissal of her. Cookie’s assistant Porsha (Ta’Rhonda Jones) is somewhat less competent (although nowhere near as inept as Cookie’s constant berating would have you believe). Porsha wins the audience’s respect by becoming something of a double agent after Anika asks her to betray Cookie. She can clearly hold her own in Empire‘s tangled web of manipulation.

Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) with his older paramour Camilla (Naomi Campbell)

Even Empire‘s most minor female characters are interesting. Hakeem’s love interests Tiana (Serayah) and Camilla (Naomi Campbell) both have their gif-able moments. When Hakeem catches Tiana cheating on him with a woman, she points out he also has “a side piece” and asks him if her indiscretion bothers him more because it was with a woman. She then demands respect for her girlfriend, making space for her on the set of a music video shoot. Older woman Camilla calls Hakeem out on the Oedipal element to their trysts (Hakeem was a baby when Cookie went to jail, so he grew up without a mother figure), and manages to hold her own in a showdown with Lucious, refusing his offer to pay her off to leave Hakeem.

So despite swapping its King Lear‘s daughters for sons, Empire manages to present an array of strong female characters. Cookie Lyon is a force of nature and an undeniable gift to pop culture, but the other women of Empire aren’t entirely eclipsed by her awesomeness. Which is really saying something. Here’s one more gif to prove it:

Cookie says "The streets aren't made for everybody. That's why they invented sidewalks." — Cookie says “The streets aren’t made for everybody. That’s why they invented sidewalks.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who hopes to one day be 1% as fabulous as Cookie Lyon.

King Vidor’s ‘Stella Dallas’ and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Melodrama is a film genre that can get a bad reputation: overblown emotions, sweeping musical scores, a lot of “drama.” In its heyday in the 1950s, these films were primarily marketed to women, and (perhaps disparagingly) known as “weepies.” But melodrama is also an island in old Hollywood—an island full of complex, flawed women, the kinds of characters viewers can simultaneously love and hate, dynamic creatures who inspire and who are also cringe-worthy.

For me, one of the best examples of this is King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937). IMDb gives this one-line summary of the film: “A low class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.” Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, author of A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960, takes a more sympathetic tone, calling Stella Dallas a “portrait of a poor girl who marries out of her class,” and notes that film icon Barbara Stanwyck’s performance as Stella is one of “great depth.” I would tend to agree with Basinger, but I must point out that the audience’s relationship to the eponymous woman is a complicated one.

Rather than an elegant, wealthy, and charismatic, Stella is a shameless social climber with no real “taste.” She comes from a ramshackle, cracker-box house and a factory-worker family, where Father and Brother both work at the local mill. Her only obvious female role model is her sallow-faced mother, who seems at once endlessly, admirably sacrificing and a woman who has had the life completely sucked out of her. Stella resists being anything like her mother. She puts little effort into making her brother’s lunch every day, and is instead invested in her looks, her clothes, and her culture (this last illustrated superficially by her enactment of reading a book—India’s Love Lyrics— as mill workers pass by her house). Eventually, Stella identifies down-on-his-luck former millionaire Stephen Dallas (John Boles) as her romantic conquest, and does everything in her power to land him for a husband who will take her away from her humble origins.

But class differences run deep. Though Stephen falls for Stella, perhaps because of her innocence and earthiness, she is unambiguous about wanting to make herself “better,” a cloudy idea she has that includes knowing the “right” people, going to the “real” places, as well as learning how to “talk like” those aforementioned people. The film makes it clear that Stella and Stephen are mismatched from the start—after their wedding and the subsequent birth of their daughter, Laurel, Stella can’t wait to get back to the River Club, and dance the night away with some high-class friends. Starting at this point, Omar Kiam’s costumes do their best to visually identify Stella as a gaudy parody of all things well-bred—she appears in all manner of spangle and print, usually together, and Barbara Stanwyck’s padded physique seems to be literally bursting at the seams of each ensemble. She is excess personified. Embarrassed by her flashiness and uncouth behavior, Stephen recoils from the relationship, finally taking a promotion that keeps him in New York City. Stella welcomes the separation, and yet one of the consequences of this move seems to be that Stella transfers her desire for upward mobility onto Laurel.

So why don’t we like her? What’s wrong with a mother wanting her daughter to have all of the best? Part of what makes Stella unlikeable is her effect on Laurel (played as a young woman by Anne Shirley). On the occasion of Laurel’s 16th birthday (for which Stella has made her daughter a beautiful, appropriate dress—why can’t she apply this savvy to her own clothes??) Stella takes a train to the city to obtain fancy party favors and table settings. She makes this trip in the company of good-hearted but loud, brash Ed Munn (Alan Hale, Sr.), who has lost some of his own formerly respectable class status through gambling disasters; as one country club attendee says, “He’s involved in horse racing.” He’s also clearly infatuated with Stella, though she rebuffs his affections and says, “I don’t think there’s a man living could get me going anymore.” Instead, she intones, all her energy is bound up in raising Laurel—both in the traditional sense of her upbringing, and in “raising” her social status above Stella’s.

Munn and Stella’s antics on the train are then observed by Laurel’s upright teacher and the mother of another girl invited to Laurel’s birthday party. Both of whom immediately pass judgment on the household, and by extension, Laurel, because of Stella’s behavior. The result is that no one attends Laurel’s party, which ends up being just the first in a series of unfortunate events, documented by Basinger in her writing on Stella Dallas, that occur when Stella’s class clashes with the class of those she strives to emulate. These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble. Class culture is indicted when viewers are asked to identify with Laurel, even when Laurel herself isn’t on screen—we understand the gap between the young woman’s intrinsic conservatism (which is deployed as a marker of upper-class behavior) and Stella’s inescapable and tragic inability to embody this value. This gap has a profound effect on how Laurel is perceived by the rest of the world, further inciting our sympathy for both women. Stella also articulates her own selfishness in several of these scenes, desiring to dance, shop, and be seen among these “right” people, before she realizes the she is not a blessing for Laurel, but a curse.

There’s a turning point in Stella Dallas that may or may not redeem Stella in the eyes of the audience. After Laurel has narrowly avoided an awkward scene with her mother in an ice-cream parlor, the two take a sleeper back to their home. As each of them pretends to sleep, they overhear other passengers talking about Stella’s larger-than-life appearance at the country club they’ve just left. The gossipy biddies agree that Laurel’s boyfriend will never continue their relationship when he’s made aware of Laurel’s lineage, and Stella slowly becomes aware that she’s a detriment to everything she has ever wanted for Laurel.

For the rest of the film, Stella forgets about her own desires and moves heaven and Earth to get Laurel away from her. This is simultaneously the best thing she could do to achieve her goal of propelling Laurel into the upper-class, and depicted as tremendously cruel for Laurel herself—another reason that, even in her glory as a “sacrificial mother,” there can exist a complicated seed of dislike for Stella. Though she eventually succeeds, it’s at the cost of sabotaging her relationship with Laurel forever, and never seeing her again. In the final scenes, we understand Stella’s plan has been both successful and monumentally hurtful for her daughter, who continues to love her mother in spite of Stella’s rough rejection of Laurel and disappearance from her life.

It’s only in the final scene of the film that we are given the green light on Stella, when we’re finally allowed to wholeheartedly admire her for what she’s done. Stella stands outside a fancy private club where Laurel is about to wed her sweetheart, gathered with other urchin-like onlookers, gawking at the beautiful couple just inside a large picture window. She begs a policeman to remain as he shoos these others away; “I just want to see her face when she kisses him,” she pleads. As the vows are solemnized, Stella’s eyes fill with tears, and she performs a signature act that has punctuated Stanwyck’s performance throughout the film—at moments when she is most conflicted, uncomfortable, and troubled, she reaches for her mouth, worrying her fingers, chipping at her front teeth with a fingernail. Here, she twists a handkerchief with her teeth as she looks on, her now much sleeker-looking physique still bursting, this time with pride. We want to applaud and weep at the same time—Stella’s sacrifice is so terrible, its goals so lofty. Finally, we can like her. But only after relinquishing nearly everything that gave her purpose.

Audiences are hard on women like Stella Dallas. Culture’s ideas of motherly perfection, class values, and models of “acceptable” behavior force them into molds they were not meant to fit in. If anything, Stella Dallas points out the most exacting of those ideals in us, the viewer, and criticizes our potential dislike of Stella. The film’s saving grace is that it allows us, and Stella herself, to leave the film not broken, but stronger for the fight.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.