78
Metascore
12 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- With its touching story and stylized treatment, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS is one of Sirk's finest films.
- 100This 1950s melodrama – as underscored by Todd Haynes' modern riff, Far from Heaven – offers smart insights into the American class system and carries a powerful emotional clout way beyond the usual limitations of its genre.
- 90Time OutTime OutOn the surface a glossy tearjerker about the problems besetting a love affair between an attractive middle class widow and her younger, 'bohemian' gardener, Sirk's film is in fact a scathing attack on all those facets of the American Dream widely held dear.
- 89Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAustin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenAgeism, sexism, classism, and unabashed snobbery rear their ugly heads in a provocatively told story by probably the greatest film melodrama stylist who ever lived.
- 88Slant MagazineEric HendersonSlant MagazineEric HendersonThe frothy May-September (well, closer to June-July) romance All That Heaven Allows is the fountain from which directors as disparate as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, and John Waters have all drunk, marking it as the most influential of the 20-plus films Sirk directed during the 1950s.
- Boiling over with heated acting and schmaltzy scores, Douglas Sirk’s ’50s melodramas tap neatly into our collective trash psyche.
- 80EmpireDavid ParkinsonEmpireDavid ParkinsonRomance novel in narrative this transcends its genre with visual depth and perceptive socio-cultural insights.
- 70The New YorkerPauline KaelThe New YorkerPauline KaelHudson and Wyman are hardly an electric combination, but this Ross Hunter production is made with so much symbolism that some people actually see it as allegorical.
- 60Although this story of a long-suffering woman who, at 40 or so, finds romance with a man between 10 and 15 years her junior, is hardly designed to ignite prairie fires, scripter Peg Fenwick nevertheless has managed to turn the Edna L. and Harry Lee story into a slightly offbeat yarn with some interesting overtones that accent the social prejudices of a small town.
- 40The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherSolid and sensible drama plainly had to give way to outright emotional bulldozing and a paving of easy clichés.