All that Heaven Allows

Douglas Sirk, USA, 1955

Comment

A widow falls in love with her gardener, but, thanks to the bourgeois attitude of the town and her own children’s prejudice, this is a love that will remain impossible. At the end of the film, when she lets their love fall, he has a bad fall in an accident, putting his life in danger. She goes to his side in the old barn, a special space that he had made, so that they could make their home together there, and stays with him. The next morning comes, the nurse opens the shutters to reveal the snowy blue landscape outside, contrasting with the warm colours inside and the fireplace. A doe crosses the lawn. The arrival of the deer coincides with the exact moment that he comes out of his coma. The snow, which had been the cause of his accident, has now become, with this symbolic deer – as if sprung from Eden itself – the signifier of his coming back to life. Both the interior and exterior worlds come together to participate in the same miracle of bringing him back to life.

Keywords

dual scene.