I found an article from Film Comment called “Queer & Now & Then: 1955,” which examines All That Heaven Allows through a queer lens. It connects Rock Hudson’s closeted identity to the film’s themes of secrecy and social judgment, showing how later knowledge about Hudson reshapes the way we watch the movie. I think this perspective is valuable because it reveals how films can carry meanings beyond what their original audiences saw, especially when stars’ private lives come to light. The article is convincing because the movie already emphasizes the tension between private desire and public appearance, so Hudson’s real-life story deepens that theme. I appreciate reading a perspective that blends film history with cultural reinterpretation, making us see the film as more than just an exaggerated melodrama.
What do you think about Cary and Ron’s struggle against social expectations being read as a metaphor for queer relationships hidden in the 1950s?
All That Heaven Allows is a melodrama and in Britannica’s definition: “a sentimental drama with an improbable plot that concerns the virtuous suffered by the villainous but ends happily triumphant.” Although All That Heaven Allows has certain melodramatic elements, the plot is far from improbable and instead concerns many women of the time and today in its critique of patriarchal and heteronormative society.
Cary’s love for Ron is not only a romantic love, but can also be interpreted as the desire for autonomy in the surburban expectations that defines her worth through marriage and motherhood. Most of the discussion involving Cary from other characters has to do with her marriage or asking how her kids are, with the former even becoming the talk of the town after she defies expectations to marry within her class or age. This desire is condemned, with her kids accusing her of selfishness and shallowness, as they suspect her to see Ron as a “set of muscles.”
The toxicity of the male-centered high society is most exemplified in Howard’s multiple assaults of Cary, as he forcefully kisses her twice while being married. Cary’s first assault was brushed under the rug as she “pretends it never happened” to avoid causing a stir- and likely because most would not be on her side. This is proved in Cary’s second assault, as most people were concerned with the way Ron protected Cary rather than Howard, the actual assailant. Cary is expected to deal with a terrifying and humiliating situation in a demure fashion.
Although I found many of the romantic parts pretty corny, I can appreciate the deeper themes of female isolation and societal expectations just below the glossy Hollywood romance surface. However, one critique that I do have for the feminist interpretation of this movie is that although it delves into the struggles of womanhood in surburban America, the solution to Cary’s problems is still a man.
This movie almost completely fails the Bechdel test, as almost all the substantial conversations in the movie either involve a man, or are two women talking about men or theories about men. (Though surprisingly, Mona’s conversation topics with Cary don’t involve men) Even though there are many interesting female characters in this movie, somehow the interactions between them almost always evolve into talking and contemplating about men. In the picture above, the daughter Kay delivers an interesting monologue about misogynistic Egyptian customs, but begins it with an even longer monologue completely focused on Harvey. Although this reflects the male-centered society that was the mid 1900’s, I wish that the female characters were able to do some introspection that didn’t have to use romance or men as a crutch.
Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows is surely a classical demonstration of continuity editing, using lots of dissolves, fade-ins, and match-on-action, etc. The techniques of shooting/editing is also our main topic for this week.
However, when I was watching the film, I cannot help myself from thinking about the mise-en-scène, particularly the symbolisms of each prop/object. There were lots of occasions when we see one’s facial features clearly but not the other one (due to lighting), when the two of them were having a conversation. Why is that? There were also different animals that appeared, including pigeon and dears. Why these animals? Mirrors also seem to be symbolic. Why did the production team make these choices?
The article talked about the scene when Cary visits Ron’s mill for the first time. As she tries to ascend the stairs, a pigeon flies out, causing her to lose balance and fall into Ron’s arms. The article claims the half-climbed steps as a common device used by Sirk. Although Cary has made the decision to walk on a path that would deviate her from her previous Bourgeois lifestyle, she is only capable of proceeding halfway into Ron’s Bohemian lifestyle. This foreshadows how she had to give up marrying Ron for consideration of her children and her community’s comments.
Ultimately though, she did fall back into Ron’s arms, in this mill which would later turn into a bedroom.
Animals
Speaking of pigeons, I was also confused of its possible symbolic meaning, as well as the deer that appeared multiple times. The article provides an insightful explanation.
On Ron’s car, there is a scene when Cary hesitates her marriage with Ron. When Ron speaks how a man has to make his own decisions, Cary responds that “And you want me to be a man”. The article claims that what might be truer to say is that Cary wants Ron to be a woman. The movie ended with a shot of Ron laying on the bed then pivoting to a deer outside the window(an animal that is associated with Ron). If the pigeon represents Ron’s challenging sexuality, then the deer implies that the male has become a “meekly submissive creature, signaling Cary’s transition from passive object to dominant subject.”
Mirror
Screenshot from the film at time 00:06:22.
In a review of All That Heaven Allows by criterion.com, All That Heaven Allows: An Articulate Screen, a specific occasion where mirror appears is discussed. This is when the audience first get introduced to the children. On the very right stands a vase containing the branches Ron cut for her earlier, where on the left we see Cary. However, between the branch and Cary intrudes the 2 children. This also acts as a foreshadow of how later in the film Kay and Ned would stand against the marriage between Cary and Ron.
Screenshot from the film at time 01:15:36.
Later when Cary and her children celebrates Christmas, Ned bought a television for Cary, with the deliveryman saying “Life’s parade at your fingertips,” but ultimately serves as the “last refuge for lonely women.”
Library of Congress Film Essay, An academic paper published by the University of Kent, commented this scene by how accurately the deliveryman’s last line captured Cary’s state of emotion as she gazes emptily at the screen. “Yet to be turned on, the machine simply mirrors her own image: a woman lost, lonely and bereft, and something beyond a technological fix.”
In conclusion, I think that the mirrors function as a reflection of the bourgeois culture. For the first mirror that got us to know Kay and Ned, the fact that Ron’s branches stood outside of the mirror’s frame tells that he is not part of the clubbing, partying culture. Having Cary emptily staring into the television screen, the film might also try to criticize the loneliness and solidarity beneath the bourgeoisie’s fancy socialization.
Chapter 6 in Film Art: An Introduction discusses editing and how the relationship between shots controls the timing and impact of the action. There are 4 dimensions of film editing: graphic relations, rhythmic relations, spatial relations, and temporal relations.
Shots can be linked via a graphic match, which entails linking shots with similar shapes, color, composition, or movement. Graphic discontinuities can be used to create contrast between shots.
The patterning of shot lengths gives the film its rhythm. Flash frames accent certain actions in a shot, giving weight to that specific action.
Editing can show where characters and objects are in a certain space. The Kuleshov effect, also called constructive editing, cuts together portions of space in a way that implies different emotions depending on what is shown. Another way to show space is analytical editing, which breaks an establishing shot into closer shots.
Editing can control the timing of an action, thus creating an order of events that affect the story, known as chronology. Flashbacks give a glimpse into the past, while flashforwards reveal future events before switching back to the present.
I recently watched Friendship (Andrew DeYoung, 2024), a black comedy about the male friendship between Craig, played by Tim Robinson, and Austin, played by Paul Rudd.
While watching, I noticed that the film makes creative use of temporal relations. In the Toad Trip scene, elliptical editing was used to show an action quicker than it would take in real life.
Craig lies down on the ground to get ready for his trip. We cut to a close up of the toad and we see Craig sit up and lick the toad. We then cut away to T-Boy, and when we cut back to Craig, we catch him at the tail end of lying back on the ground. Finally, we cut back to T-Boy, who has just finished putting the toad back in the carrier and closing the lid.
In this scene, the actions are presented on screen quicker than they would take in real life. The actions of T-Boy are implied because they are nonessential to the scene. The 180 degree rule is also in play during this scene. The camera never crosses the axis of action, and the characters are in a shot/reverse shot sequence.
This week, we looked at how editing can change how a film feels through changes in rhythm, space, and time. Film Art refers to them as “relations” (rhythmic relations, spatial relations, etc).
One particularly good example of a good execution of these techniques is Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). Based on Jonathan Nolan’s (Christopher Nolan’s brother) short story “Memento Mori”, Memento follows Leonard, a man with amnesia and short-term memory loss, as he uses polaroids, tattoos, and notes to find the man who assaulted and murdered his wife.
Spoiler warning.
The masterful editing is most evident through Dody Dorn’s (the editor) ability to manipulate temporal relations. For a film about amnesia, telling the story from start to end would be, as Jared Devin writes, “nothing interesting and…[lacking of] impact” (https://medium.com/@jdevin413/the-editing-room-memento-in-reverse-bd379b33620). Instead, this film is edited from end to beginning, working backwards through a series of black-and-white flashbacks and color lapses of memory for Leonard.
Our perception of time and the film’s plot as a whole is altered by the editing because we’re suddenly thrown into Leonard’s situation. We don’t know the full picture, yet we’re barrelling ahead into the unknown. As the film progresses (backward), we learn more and more about the people around him, and how some characters aren’t what they seem. For example, Natalie is seen as a particularly benevolent character who is helping Leonard out of pity, but later on, it’s revealed that she’s taking advantage of his amnesia and manipulating him to do cleanup work for her late drug dealer boyfriend.
Another way Memento manipulates temporal relations is through switching between color and black-and-white shots. When the color scene initially cuts to a black-and-white shot, we’re left confused as to why it happened. But as the film goes on, we begin to reach an understanding of what the color change is meant to signify – color means the story is going backwards, and black-and-white is going forwards. My favorite part of the entire movie is when the ending sequence begins in black-and-white, and halfway through, it seamlessly transitions into color, and you realize that the stories have converged.
Another aspect I’d like to point out is how Dorn uses repeating actions (this could also be overlapping editing) in the film to help the viewers familiarize themselves with where they temporally are in the film. For example, one scene opens with Leonard frantically trying to find a pen to write something down. We’re not sure what he’s panicking about, and soon we forget as Natalie walks in. But in the next color scene, it’s revealed that Natalie is manipulating him. That color scene ends with him panicking to find a pen, which Natalie had taken out of the room. As jarring as this sounds, this film is able to transition between the two seamlessly. Dorn uses a variety of dissolves and fades to move between black-and-white and color snippets.
All in all, this film is a masterpiece in both storytelling and editing. Nolan and Dorn are both so talented at hiding information from the viewer and foreshadowing future events that you will be on the edge of your seat for the entire movie. I wholeheartedly recommend you watch this film if you like psychological and/or thriller movies.
This chapter covers how editors can manipulate time, space, and emotion through choosing which shots to include in a film and how they will be arranged. Film Art discusses four different relations that could happen between two shots: graphic relations, rhythmic relations, special relations, and temporal relations.
Graphic relations includes using contrasts or similarities between two clips; one example is making a graphic match which links shots by close graphic similarities.
Rhythmic relations is characterized by using cuts of certain lengths to create a rhythm. Additionally, this technique uses different cuts to evoke different emotions, such as flash-frames; this is often used in action films as it stresses a moment and can elicit suspense.
Spacial relations uses editing to establish and manipulate space. One example of this is the Kuleshov effect, which we talked about in class. This effect is used to reveal the emotion or intent of a character by showing a person and then the object they are looking at, allowing us to interpret what they may be thinking.
Temporal relations shapes how the viewer sees time. For instance, a flash forward manipulates the chronological order of information the viewer gets. Additionally, editing can condense or expand the duration that a certain action can take. Elliptical editing can present an action as taking less time than it actually does, while overlapping editing can prolong an action.
One specific type of editing than manipulates space and time is crosscutting, when the plot alternates shots of one story with shots of another one elsewhere. My favorite movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, utilizes this technique very effectively. There are two simultaneous events happening during the film: the politicians and military deliberating in the war room, and the lieutenants in the B-52.
The constant crosscutting creates suspense, as the people in the war room cannot communicate with the personnel in the B-52, unable to call them back to abandon their previous order to bomb the Soviet Union. Switching between these two simultaneous events, with each side holding limited information, builds tension for the viewer who can see the whole picture. We understand that if the B-52 successfully manages to bomb the USSR, it will activate the “doomsday bomb”, which will essentially wipe out all life on the planet. However, the people in the plane do not know that. Additionally, we see the B-52 evade getting taken down from Soviet airspace, but feel anticipation when we see that the people in the war room do not realize that until it is too late. Overall, I believe this film perfectly demonstrates how crosscutting can create suspense and highlight the motivations and emotions of two different places at once.
In chapter 6 argues that editing is not just a tradition, but it is a viewer-oriented tool. The directors use these tools to shape viewer’s experience by manipulating time, space, and pictural qualities. These techniques can decide how the film is ordered, transitioned, and presented to guide the audience’s understanding of the whole film.
180 degrees system (axis of action).
This technique fixes the camera placement to one side of an imaginary line on screen, so that the spatial relationships stay the same. This makes the audience able to understand how the characters are doing within a scene.
Eyeline match.
The eyeline match connects the glance into shot A of character A into shot B of character B. Because of the space it created through the 180 degrees system and the space created through the connecting look, we can sense how it builds space for us to see.
Shot/reverse shot.
This shot pattern alternates views from two ends of the axis, typically with two people, each shot can represent one person talking or their relationships.
After reading chapter six, I would like to discuss it along with some shots of a film I watched recently called the Contratiempo, or The Invisible Guest.
This scene is from the ending of the story, where Adrian and the fake Ms. Goodman are discussing where exactly Adrian sunk the car, and how he should respond to the court to not get caught and be in jail.
This part starts with a side shot of Adrian’s face, then it went on to have the 180 degrees system in the apartment room.
Then follows a close shot of Ms. Goodman (fake). At this point their line of view already started to come at one point, where they each star each other into the eye. Ms. Goodman (fake) is acting angry as a lawyer role for her client not cooperating, while Adrian is angry that Ms. Goodman always leads him to say things he hide inside his heart that “will be good for him on court”.
Then it went to medium, over-shoulder shots that records their conversation. We can also see the shot/reverse shot technique used here
The last part is a long shot, but still on the 180 degree system, with the two apart, suggesting their fate will not eventually come together, and the “Ms. Goodman” will not win her case on court.
We see how the director used the 180 degree system to show their final conversation carried on, and how different camera positions on the 180 degree system is used to achieve different effect and feeling for the audience.
In short, the scene use continuity to stabilize comprehension, and create a clear map of space, time and causality, so performance carries our attention. The filmmaker can modulate intensity of a clip and its meaning through editing, and make the dramatic logic work more fluently.
