All I Desire (1953) - film review

In 1910, Naomi Murdock is an itinerant actress who earns barely enough to live on, performing at rundown theatres in provincial towns across America.  One day, she receives a letter from her daughter Lily with an invitation to visit her on the eve of her graduation from high school.  Naomi hasn’t seen her family for several years and is unsure how she will be greeted by the husband she walked out on to pursue her far from spectacular acting career.  Motivated by a strange longing to revisit her past, Naomi heads back to her hometown in Wisconsin.  Here, she receives a warm welcome from Lily who, herself an aspiring actress, is delighted that her mother can see her perform in the end of term play.  Naomi’s eldest daughter Joyce is less enthusiastic over her mother’s return and tries to persuade her to go away before she reopens too many old wounds.  Naomi is torn between leaving and staying.  Her visit has rekindled her love for her husband, Henry, and she realises that he is still in love with her.  Unfortunately. Naomi’s former lover, Dutch, is still on the scene and intends to reclaim her for himself...

One of the first of Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodramas, All I Desire is a prime example of what some would derogatorily term a woman’s picture, although anyone familiar with Sirk’s work will know that there is far more to it than that.   Far from being just another over-egged weepy, this is a thinly veiled satire on contemporary attitudes to a woman’s role in society.  The film was made at a time when women were expected to stay at home to devote all of their energies to looking after the husband and the children.  Often as not, any woman who wanted to pursue a career was considered selfish and treated as a pariah.  All I Desire is a sensitive study of a woman who is torn between the security and love that come from a having normal family life and the independence and fulfilment that work offers her.  Society will not allow her to have both, so she must make a choice and ultimately give up half of what she needs to be a complete woman.  

The casting of Barbara Stanwyck in the lead role is an inspired touch, since she has a particular talent for playing independently minded women with a habit of infringing societal taboos whilst retaining the sympathy of the audience.  The realism and vitality that Stanwyck brings to the film provide an effective counter to the saccharine artificiality of the world that Sirk and his production team conjure up.  It is ironic that she plays the part of an actress (and a failed one at that), since her character seems to be the only one with any real substance.  Only Naomi appears to be capable of choosing her own destiny, whilst everyone else appears to an automaton governed by the unbending rules of a society that makes few concessions for individuality.

Whilst not as sophisticated as Sirk’s later melodramas, All I Desire embraces many of the themes which the director would explore in his subsequent work.  These include the conflict between the pursuit of individual happiness and the constraints of a supposedly respectable society, and the apparent need for material wealth to compensate for unfulfilled emotional needs.  Sirk’s delicacy and skill as a director, together with Stanwyck’s compelling performance, transform what could have been an implausible mawkish fantasy into an exquisitely poignant drama which still has a powerful resonance.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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