Blu-ray, DVD Release: All That Heaven Allows

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 10, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion


All That Heaven Allows movie scene

Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in All That Heaven Allows.

 

All That Heaven Allows is a heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores from filmmaker Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind).

The 1955 drama follows the blossoming love between a well-off suburban widow (Jane Wyman, Magnificent Obsession) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock Hudson, Seconds). After their romance prompts the scorn of her selfish children and snooty country club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others.

With the help of ace cinematographer Russell Metty (Spartacus), Sirk imbued nearly every shot with a vivid and distinct emotional tenor. A pinnacle of expressionistic Hollywood melodrama, this profoundly felt film about class and conformity in small-town America.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD combo edition All That Heaven Allows contains the following features:

• New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring John Mercer, coauthor of Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility, and film scholar Tamar Jeffers-McDonald
• Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), a groundbreaking essay film about the actor by Mark Rappaport
• French television interview with Sirk from 1982
• Excerpts from Behind the Mirror: A Profile of Douglas Sirk, a 1979 BBC documentary featuring rare interview footage with the director
• Contract Kid: William Reynolds on Douglas Sirk, a 2007 interview with the actor, who costarred in three Sirk films, including All That Heaven Allows
• Trailer
• One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
• A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Laura Mulvey and an excerpt from a 1971 essay by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Sirk

 

Buy or Rent All That Heaven Allows
Amazon graphic
Blu-ray/DVD Combo
DVD Empire graphicBlu-ray/DVD Combo Movies Unlimited graphicBlu-ray/DVD Combo Netflix graphic

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.