Though there is admittedly something fun about seeing actors give it there all and emotions run rampant, a good way to think about this type of filmmaking in terms of justification is that there is simply too much to say to be anything but unambiguous. That's certainly true of The Immigrant, and it's a pretty good way to consider Sirk's film as well.

All that Heaven Allows, like most of Sirk's films, was not initially a big hit, but over the years it's become recognized as something great, just as its director has earned auteur-status--plus a direct homage in Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven (one of those films that's unabashedly derivative, in the same way that Sirk was unabashedly melodramatic) and a remake, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul from German icon Rainer Werner Fassbender.
Watching All that Heaven Allows, one ultimately can't help but admire the sincerity and intensity with which Sirk tells his story (represented visually as well by his vivid use of lighting, lots of dramatic reds and blues, usually representing emotion and passivity). It's a style that perhaps wouldn't work as well in subsequent decades, but is perfectly suited for the 1950s, when directness was the perfect way to address and critique the passive aggressive nature of 1950s suburbia. Today, though, when digital screens are used not to explore, but to retreat, to hide (screens have pretty much gone back to their original meaning, namely to be a protective device), this directness might have value again. Perhaps that's partly why The Immigrant, while so old fashioned, feels incredibly relevant in the here and now.
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