Film Analysis All That Heaven AllowsChosen Sequence: Golden Rain Tree/Cary's Bedroom Scene.Before the emergence of the "Auteur Theory", Director Douglas Sirk was a renowned exponent of classical Hollywood narrative, particularly in the romantic melodrama genre, of which his film All That Heaven Permits is a classic example. However, he is now considered a master of mise-en-scène, one of the few tools left to a director working within the constraints of the Hollywood studio/institutional system, which is now believed to have been highly critical of mainstream American culture and society in this prosperous country. era. 1, 2The "Golden Rain Tree" sequence takes place at the beginning of the film, after the opening pan, the establishing shot, which shows the scene of the action, a small bourgeois town in New England in autumn. Soon the main protagonists are introduced, whose main causal agent is a troubled woman, Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), in keeping with romantic melodrama. Being a widow, she is a victim of circumstance eager to change her life. Her friend visits (Mona) and hopes to convince Cary to take a conventional route out of widowhood but, by chance, she meets the gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson) and from the staging of these opening scenes it is obvious that he would do. I prefer a romantic affiliation of some kind with Ron. After some pleasantries, some tea at the table outside Cary's house, and some profound references to gardening, Ron goes to hand Cary a small twig, evidently as a sign of deep affection. The film so far shows all the conventions of classical narrative and maintains all the dominant ideologies or......middle of paper......classic narrative cinema. In Being There, Gardiner's character and motivations are made much clearer to the viewer through the imaginative use of mise-en-scène, as illustrated above. NOTES1. Carroll. Essay The moral ecology of melodrama: the family conspiracy and the magnificent obsession. P. 170.2. Cooked. P. 76-79. BIBLIOGRAPHY Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Film Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Image Interpretation in motion Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press1998The Book of Cinema Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985FILMOGRAPHYAll That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955Being There dir. Hal Ashby 1979