Inscription and Erasure in All This, and Heaven Too

Abstract

We can now move on from the exceptional work that is Letter from an Unknown Woman, to a film that I have chosen as representative of a rich area of Hollywood melodrama, one which is not canonical and has had relatively little critical attention.² I offer it as a case of how letters and literacy can be sufficiently present and important in the workings of a film as to provide a framework for understanding it, without being signalled in such a way as to become the pre-eminent subject of the narrative. I will analyse how these activities, both in their presence and sometimes as crucially in their absence, enable this film to address issues of power, identity, expressiveness, frustration and love.

Human societies, as we know them, could not exist except with each individual’s choosing not to exercise freedom.

Stanley Cavell, The Senses of Walden¹