All that Heaven Allows

Always inventive, never repetitive, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was among the world’s most fascinating filmmaking figures, responsible for several masterworks. Among them, ‘Ali’ may be the best of the best.

“All That Heaven Allows stands as the defining work of Sirk’s career, the greatest of his films made in the midst of a decade in which he turned conventional ‘women’s pictures’ or ‘weepies’ into profound, virtually unparalleled conflicts played out in domesticated arenas.”

Between the time he directed his last film — Imitation of Life, in 1959 — and his death in 1987, Douglas Sirk managed to see his critical stock rise considerably. His work, specifically his 1950s work for Universal, went from being dismissed as soapy fluff to being reevaluated as sly, barbed condemnations of the social values …