: Study Questions: Week Six

The Future Is Plastics

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

The Graduate (1967)

The Dream as Nightmare

This pair of films exemplify the change that took place in attitudes toward the American Dream between the mid-1950s and the later 1960s. In many ways, these films are similar in subject. Both criticize the manner in which a set of ideals expressed in films like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) can be reduced to the material prosperity of suburban life and to an attempt to preserve surfaces. The result is an emphasis on "keeping up with the Jones's (a phrase often heard throughout the 1950s) and social conformity. Many of the same narrative motifs can be found in each film: the love affair between and older woman and a younger man, the generational conflict between college students and their parents, the intellectual and spiritual emptiness haunting apparently fortunate members of the middle class (to mention only a few of the more obvious similarities).

What we want to explore are the very different perspectives from which each film critiques the American Dream and the significance of the ways in which the central characters choose to make better lives for themselves. Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows uses the conventions of the domestic melodrama (often called a "women's film") to expose the darker aspects of the values which the domestic melodrama generally endorses. At the same time, however, his film offers an alternative in the life chosen by Cary Scott and Ron Kirby which remains very close to the Dream itself: personal fulfillment in a domestic relationship which liberates rather than stifles individual aspirations. A little over a decare later, Mike Nichols in The Graduate offers a far more bleak prospect for the young lovers who resist being entrapped in the sterile, Country-club world of their parents. The questions below should help sort out the differences in the way the films treat the American Dream.

1. All That Heaven Allows opens with an aerial shot which establishes the setting as a New England town (more correctly a small city). a church steeple dominates the shot, and this shot will be repeated twice more in the film. How does this repetition serve to divide the narrative into three sections? What important event takes place just before or after the the second and third appearance of the steeple? Why use the church as the dominant feature of the landscape? In what ways does it point up the ironic contrast between the serene and traditional surface of the town and the narrow, hypocritical forces at work beneath the surface?

2. How is Cary Scott different from her friends (and for that matter the other mothers we have seen in earlier films (i.e. The Best Years of Our Lives, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Rebel Without a Cause, and The Manchurinn Candidate)? In what ways is she presented as more or less sympathetically? Consider the film's narrative point of view and the relationships with friends, families, and children).

3. Why is her desire to have a personal (as opposed to social or family) life so difficult to achieve?

4. In what ways do the men attracted to Cary (Harvey, Howard Hoff, Ron Kirby) represent three contrasting futures offered to Cary?

5. How are we to judge the behavior of Cary's children? What irony is evident in the contrast between Kay's theoretical understanding of human psychology and her reaction to her mother's decision to marry again? Why is Ned, a student, always dressed like the men at the country club? What does their insistence that their mother keep a house for them and then leaving for marriage and careers say about their "family values"? Do you see any reasons why Ned might better have been drowned at birth?

6. What is the thematic significance of Ron Kirby's business, his home, his embodiment of the ideas of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson? How does the film use Ron's way of life to criticize Cary's neighbors?

7. In what ways does the party at Mick and Alida Anderson's offer a vision of community that is the polar opposite of that seen in the country club?

8. Describe how the conflict between Ron Kirby and the town's gentry reflects differences in social class as well as style of life. What sorts of businesses do you think support the upper-class characters who populate the film (they are never mentioned)?

9. Does the film debunk the American Dream envisioned in earlier films. Or does it offer a more authentic alternative chosen, in the end, by Cary and Ron? How do Mick and Alida help the audience understand the value of Roy's life? Condiser their previous life, the books they read, their friends and social life.

10. The uses of lighting and color are very stylized. For example, the repeated contrasts between cold, blue images and warm yellow and red scenes (both often seen in the same shot); the emphasis on images so stereotypical that they seem to parody the values the images symbolize (consider the Christmas decorations, the interiors of the homes). How do these techniques serve to reinforce the themes of the film?

11. In what ways might this film be described as feminist in its sympathies?

12.What does the ominous, alien-like TV set Cary receives for Christmas from her son symbolize? How is TV associated with the misunderstanding of the true American Dream? What thematic similarities can be found in the way TV figures into The Graduate?

13. What is the symbolic significance of the film's climax (Kirby's fall) and conclusion (Kirby asleep being watched over by Cary)? Is this an optimistic ending, or does it imply a darker future for the couple? Why?

14. How does the opening sequence before and behind the credits establish the film's setting and its satiric thrust? What is implied in the opening line: "We are about to descend into Los Angeles"? How might this be understood as the hero' descent from ivory tower innocence into contemporary America?

15. In what ways would comparing the opening of the two films show us something about the way American cultural values have changed during the 1950s and 1960s?

16. What is your interpretation of the expression on Ben's face during the first part of the film? What does his expression suggest about his future and about his willingness to pursue the American Dream?

17. What is, in your estimation, the symbolic significance of the repeated images of fish, water, and floating? How are they related to the film's central theme?

18. Why does Mrs. Robinson go to such lengths to seduce Ben? What would you say her motives might be? Don't oversimplify.

19. Contrast Ben Braddock and Ron Kirby as characters and as rebels agasinst the American Dream.

20. Is Ben a rebel breaking free to begin a new life, or is he just rebelling with no goals? Consider the film's final shot and his expression).

21. What evidence can you see that he might become the next generation's version of his own (and Elaine's) parents?

22. What, finally, is the significance of the line "The future is plastics"?

23. Would you describe All that Heaven Allows a realistic film, a social allegory in the manner of The Best Years of Our Lives, a satirical comment on the values embodied in popular domestic melodramas, or all three? What are the reasons for your choice?