The beautiful film All That Heaven Allows directed by Douglas Sirk shows the struggles women faced in the 1950’s and how gender norms limited women from having an independent and safe surrounding, all through the story of a rich widowed woman who falls for a young man. Sirk uses the set of the film to its maximum potential with his experience with mise-en-scène. With mise-en-scène Sirk can place any visual object in order gain emotion from his audience and in the film All That Heaven Allows he uses color, prison iconography, and facial expressions to express the tone of the situations.
Sirk’s use of mise-en-scène throughout the film tells more of the story than the actual actors because when watched without prior knowledge looks like a normal love story of an older woman with a younger man. Each new area in the film subtly shows how the heroin is being pulled away from happiness because she is a woman and does not know what she wants to do to be happy. The is why this film uses every single …show more content…
Sirk off the bat uses the dry orange color and fading green to signify to draw contrast to Cary, the main character in the film, who is wearing a boring cement gray. Now why would the protagonist of the film look less interesting than her setting? Sirk made Cary a prisoner of her own home to portray how the story will later be with Cary struggling to break free from society's gender norms. Cary being told by her friend that she could not join her for coffee leaves Cary to herself where she meets Ron, the male protagonist of the film. He’s asked if he would like to accompany her, he says yes and sits down next to a red, white, and blue flowers. Sirk is poking fun at the old american custom of hospitality. Through mise-en-scène Sirk is satirising the American image with coffee, cake, and a white upper class white woman an obvious joke to the American
Sirk’s use of mise-en-scène throughout the film tells more of the story than the actual actors because when watched without prior knowledge looks like a normal love story of an older woman with a younger man. Each new area in the film subtly shows how the heroin is being pulled away from happiness because she is a woman and does not know what she wants to do to be happy. The is why this film uses every single …show more content…
Sirk off the bat uses the dry orange color and fading green to signify to draw contrast to Cary, the main character in the film, who is wearing a boring cement gray. Now why would the protagonist of the film look less interesting than her setting? Sirk made Cary a prisoner of her own home to portray how the story will later be with Cary struggling to break free from society's gender norms. Cary being told by her friend that she could not join her for coffee leaves Cary to herself where she meets Ron, the male protagonist of the film. He’s asked if he would like to accompany her, he says yes and sits down next to a red, white, and blue flowers. Sirk is poking fun at the old american custom of hospitality. Through mise-en-scène Sirk is satirising the American image with coffee, cake, and a white upper class white woman an obvious joke to the American