The title of this efficient documentary, patching together archive footage with off-camera interview material, is naturally taken from the 1955 romantic drama All That Heaven Allows, directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Rock Hudson opposite Jane Wyman; it is a movie – and a genre – long since rescued from critical condescension. Hudson did indeed seem to have all that heaven allowed: an almost preternatural handsomeness with something like Cary Grant’s looks and pure movie-star glow, overlaid with a granite masculinity, and a cool, insouciant style, which appeared to enclose an enigma long before his gay identity and his Aids diagnosis was confirmed at the very end of his life.
Even when he went out of style during the American new wave, as the scuffed-up authenticity of Pacino, Hoffman and De Niro was starting to make Hudson’s beefcake gorgeousness look silly, he simply transferred to TV and became a big star all over again in the married-detective show McMillan & Wife. Hudson was a really good actor (something which this film could perhaps have spent more time analysing) – particularly in the Sirk movies, George Stevens’s epic Giant and John Frankenheimer’s masterly, disturbing 1966 sci-fi Seconds. In fact this documentary does do a good job of showing how this latter film’s agonised themes of identity, escape and living a lie were perfectly suited to Hudson’s private life.
