| Prior to last year’s release of Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven, interest in the films of Douglas Sirk had long been the reserve of film critics and scholars.
Haynes, however, quite graciously acknowledged that the German émigré’s 1950s Hollywood melodramas were the primary inspiration for Far From Heaven. Interestingly, the success of Haynes’s film has led to a renewed appreciation of Sirk’s oeuvre among a generation of filmgoers conditioned to laugh at melodrama and so there are new Criterion Collection DVD editions of Written on the Wind (1956) and All That Heaven Allows (1956)
Yet, while Haynes may be responsible for this resurgence of interest in Sirk he’s not the first filmmaker to have been influenced by Sirk’s cinematic critiques of societal mores. In fact, it’s possible to regard Far From Heaven as Sirk filtered through the work of German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), a remake of All That Heaven Allows, was Fassbinder’s own homage to Sirk and, conveniently enough, it has also been released on DVD by Criterion (with an introduction from Haynes, no less).
As much as each film is unique, it is revelatory to compare the Sirk film with the Fassbinder film to see how each filmmaker approaches what is essentially a parable about the dangers of non-conformity. In All That Heaven Allows, Sirk explores the attitudes of 1950s mainstream America through the story of an upper-class widow (Jane Wyman) who falls in love with her younger, working-class gardener (Rock Hudson), who prunes the trees around her postcard-perfect suburban home. Fassbinder, on the other hand, examines the social structure of 1970s Germany through the story of a German woman (Brigitte Mira) who falls in love with a younger Moroccan immigrant (El Hedi ben Salem).
Unfortunately, each woman’s romantic relationship poses a number of problems. In the Sirk film, Wyman’s character is the victim of conformist pressure from her All-American children and the gossipy hens in her social circle. Though beautiful, she is an aging widow, and in 1950s America, her relationship with a younger man of a lesser social class is perceived to be indecorous.
In Fassbinder’s film, Bira’s character also faces gossip, as well as the more insidious racial prejudice of all and sundry. The age difference in this case is less a problem than the matter of racial difference, a thorny issue in postwar Germany, even 30 years after the end of the Second World War. Her children also react with horror when they learn of their mother’s new relationship.
Moreover, the most vexing issue in each film, and the one that leads to the greatest disappointments, is the extent to which each woman internalizes the values of her particular social milieu. Each film ends ambiguously, as each protagonist continues to fight against the roles that have been defined for her by society. Yet, it seems that the antagonistic forces may be too much for either of them to bear, given that those forces are woven into the fabric of society itself.
All That Heaven Allows and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul both show that many people are loath to accept differences in the behaviour of others, although they may cloak their intolerance in the terms of moralistic propriety. The films may address class prejudice and racism, but they also clearly show the social pressure to conform to those intolerant ideals.
If Haynes’s amalgamation of these films in Far From Heaven wasn’t proof enough, their relevance to a contemporary audience is evident from the debate about same-sex marriage in Canada. Two homosexuals seeking to formalize their commitment to each other in the eyes of the law is no more a threat to the institution of marriage than two heterosexuals who wish to do the same.
The pressure to conform is still as great as it ever was, and while Sirk made Hollywood melodramas and Fassbinder made European art films, there are undoubtedly similarities in their work that reveal something about human nature at any time, in any place. |
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