Colorful (with glittering colors) depiction of a small town in Vermont in the Winter which followed the economic slump .Nonetheless,it's more a capraesque fable than a realistic picture of an era :the Blaisdell family is middle-class ,they have a nice house with a spare room ;the poor of the time stay behind the scenes (even Dan has nothing to do with the youth of Wellmann's "wild boys of the road" ).
Fulton (Charles Coburn) ,an old wealty man plays the good fairy and bestows 100,000 dollars on them ,in memory of a love from long ago ,the late grandma of the family.The mother (Lynn Bari ,who resembles Claudette Colbert ) has always regretted this missed opportunity .
Now a nouveau riche (a French pejorative expression) she's eager to join the high society,made of hateful snobs (" Ah! my daughter was not nice enough for their Karl!).There's no room for Dan (Rock Hudson) as a groom -to quote another Sirk movie - and he proudly steps aside ; in "all that heaven allows" , the jet set of the town was scandalized when one of them (Jane Wyman) had an affair with a modest gardener (Hudson);even the bourgeois children tried to make them break up ;in the precedent effort ("no room for the groom" ) there was also an over-possessive mother who bore her son-in-law a grudge because he was not rich .
The rest of the family does not react to the event that way:their attitude reflects ,often eloquently ,the confusion that follows an unexpected godsend : the dad does not know safe investment (obviously ,he does not remember what happened in 1929) ,the son gambles ;only the daughters are not impressed ,the youngest being ,of course ,the wisest.
And the exuberant millionnaire ,perhaps for the first time in his life,is having fun ;one can imagine some skinflint Scrooge who understands in his twilight years that his life was eventually a unfulfilled one.So his act of puppeteer allows him to lead the wild life he has always longed for: to tackle abstract art , to sing and dance ,to visit the speakeasies and to scandalize the high society by "comforting" a girl who could be his granddaughter ...And to experiment prison !
Watch out for James Dean :he appears at the 31st minute and he's got a line to say.
Fulton (Charles Coburn) ,an old wealty man plays the good fairy and bestows 100,000 dollars on them ,in memory of a love from long ago ,the late grandma of the family.The mother (Lynn Bari ,who resembles Claudette Colbert ) has always regretted this missed opportunity .
Now a nouveau riche (a French pejorative expression) she's eager to join the high society,made of hateful snobs (" Ah! my daughter was not nice enough for their Karl!).There's no room for Dan (Rock Hudson) as a groom -to quote another Sirk movie - and he proudly steps aside ; in "all that heaven allows" , the jet set of the town was scandalized when one of them (Jane Wyman) had an affair with a modest gardener (Hudson);even the bourgeois children tried to make them break up ;in the precedent effort ("no room for the groom" ) there was also an over-possessive mother who bore her son-in-law a grudge because he was not rich .
The rest of the family does not react to the event that way:their attitude reflects ,often eloquently ,the confusion that follows an unexpected godsend : the dad does not know safe investment (obviously ,he does not remember what happened in 1929) ,the son gambles ;only the daughters are not impressed ,the youngest being ,of course ,the wisest.
And the exuberant millionnaire ,perhaps for the first time in his life,is having fun ;one can imagine some skinflint Scrooge who understands in his twilight years that his life was eventually a unfulfilled one.So his act of puppeteer allows him to lead the wild life he has always longed for: to tackle abstract art , to sing and dance ,to visit the speakeasies and to scandalize the high society by "comforting" a girl who could be his granddaughter ...And to experiment prison !
Watch out for James Dean :he appears at the 31st minute and he's got a line to say.