ALL I DESIRE (1953) B/W 79m dir: Douglas Sirk

w/Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Carlson, Lyle Bettger, Marcia Henderson, Maureen O'Sullivan, Richard Long, Billy Gray, Lotte Stein, Lori Nelson

An actress who left her husband and children years before for a career on the stage returns to their small-town home for a reconcilliation. Touching, well-acted soap opera, with the sparkle of inteligence and humor. From John Halliday's Sirk on Sirk : "[Stanwyck] was an excellent actress ... one of the best in town. In this picture she had the unsentimental sadness of a broken life about her. This was a pre-study of the 'actress' in Imitation of Life . She comes back from an imitated life. ... I was attracted by the title [of the novel by Caro Brink], Stopover . Stanwyck doesn't get into her love again --- there is something blocking her. A woman comes back with all her dreams, with her love --- and she finds nothing but this rotten, decrepit middle-class American family. ... [About the happy ending which doesn't happen in the novel] Ross Hunter was iron. We had to have it. But that was a further reason I wanted to keep Stopover as the title for the picture. It was a much darker title. It would have deepened the picture and the character --- and at the same time the irony."