Leo MCarey's An Affair to Remember; Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows.

Sirk's taste is exquisite and, hence, inimitable.  One big objection to his oeuvre is an inbred prejudice to what Raymond Durgnat has called the genre of the female weepies as opposed to the male weepies, particularly the kind from Italy that are hailed as "humanist."
--Andrew Sarris

I was wondering  as I watched Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1956) and McCarey's An Affair to Remember (1957) last week, whether it is still considered "unmanly" to have feelings and show emotion.  I think it still is, though perhaps less so now, and these films are still considered "soap operas;" though that term may mean different things to different people it is still usually meant as a putdown.  I do think that some people laugh at these films because the feelings they evoke make some viewers uncomfortable; many cannot distinguish genuine sentiment from meretricious sentimentality.  Nor can everyone distinguish between the emotional plots and the extremely beautiful use of color in these films, although as in many great films the two enhance each other. And the role that Christmas plays in both movies adds to the discomfort.

An Affair to Remember is McCarey's remake of  Love Affair, a film he made in 1939 with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer.  What makes the later film particularly poignant is that the love affair is between Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, who are older and for whom this may be that last chance to marry and have children.  As in the earlier film they plan to jettison their current partners, pursue financial independence and, if all goes well, meet at the top of the Empire State Building ("the nearest thing to heaven we have in New York," says Kerr) in six months.  McCarey uses the widescreen format brilliantly as in two exquisite scenes a door opens to show an important reflection, once to Kerr and once to Grant, causing him to realize that Kerr never showed up because she was hit by a car when she was "looking up."

All That Heaven Allows stars Jane Wyman as a widow and Rock Hudson as her younger lover.  These are not stars who resonate now in a positive way, unfortunately (especially Hudson) but Sirk directs them beautifully, contrasting Wyman's small town and socially constrained widow with Hudson's love of the outdoors.  Sirk also has a feeling for the seasons, the physical beauty of the fall foliage and the winter snow, as well as a feeling for how two people so different in social standing and age can find common ground in a love of beauty.  There is one particularly sad shot when Wyman's children get her a television and she looks at it, the television reflecting her unhappiness at how little her children understand what matters to her.