The Thinking Woman:

“Until Sirk’s films, I’d never seen movies where you see women thinking on screen.” -- Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“People may laugh at the brazen color and Tock Hudson.  But the performances by Jane Wyman, and other actresses who played central female characters, ground the movies and start to affect you as you watch them.” -- Todd Haynes, Audio Commentary, director of the Sirk-inspired film
Far From Heaven

"It didn’t help that Sirk worked often in one of the more disreputable corners of cinema, the women’s picture. This genre has never had the hip cachet of, say, film noir or even the western, and so his films are rarely revived outside museums and film societies. Fortunately, European critics and filmmakers, including Godard and Fassbinder, were part of the rescue team, pointing out to those who cared to listen the glories in this overripe, quite individual cinema." -- (7)

My thoughts: Refer to the All that Heaven Allows summary (which was written before I read through these Sirk sources.)
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