Douglas Sirk

What I mean in the above post: There seems to be a thing with Sirk that goes "Hey its all trashy and melodramatic but he like subverts all that man!" As if he is mocking that whole style of storytelling. This allows highbrows to watch them without feeling guilty, because they, along with Sirk, can feel superior to it.

But I don't think Sirk buys in to all that, and I think its a serious misreading of his films to say that he does. The underlying sincerity is what makes his films great, not the sarcasm.

My point is that there is no way audiences could mistake "Imitation of Life" for anything but a film about race (among other things). The current film studies cant about Sirk being subversive has never convinced me. His best films are sincere, beautifully-crafted liberal melodramas. If I knew how to italicize "liberal" I would. And I'm not using it as an epithet.

It's frustrating that more of his movies aren't available to rent, besides the handful of big titles. Last weekend I rented some pirated VHS copies of ones I hadn't seen - Shockproof and Sleep, My Love. (They were both taped off TV, then transferred many times to tape - one seemed to be taped off something called "The Mystery Channel.") And they were so great! Kind of like "noir melodrama." Real b-movie noir type things, but with this incredible touch that somehow makes the characters and situations unusually moving and sympathetic, even when the proceedings are kind of stilted or cliched.

I really want to somehow see all his movies now. And, the thing is, even the movies that don't, as a whole, "do it for me" (I'm not too big on All That Heaven Allows; and Magnificent Obsession just sort of weirds me out, though it's pretty amazingly weird) have individual scenes or aspects that are just so effective and singular, in ways I can't fully account for (but which has mostly to do, I guess, with staging and performances). Fassbinder movies tend to strike me in much the same way, as it happens.

Besides the big, often-screened titles (Imitation of Life is one of my favorite all-time moves), others available on video that I particularly recommend are The Tarnished Angels and Lured (a pretty loopy and funny comedy-thriller with Lucille Ball).

charles taylor recently had an interesting article in salon about laughing at old movies.

and one reason i could never love Far From Heaven as much as a Sirk film was because i never sensed the sincerity there. maybe it's the idea of doing a deliberately outdated genre, and then adding modern touches, as if it was somehow improving or "updating" the women's picture? Why not make it modern, or in a modern style at least? does haynes fall into the subversive trap talked about above? i dont know. frankly i just found it boring and maybe im trying to justify that.

Contrast Far From Heaven with that Fassbinder flim that also played off All That Heaven Allows (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul?). Fassbinder's movie is very much a '70s German movie, and makes no attempt to play off the old "genre," yet it resonates, in a new and personal way, with Sirk's themes. That's the kind of thing I assumed Haynes was going to do, and was mystified to see this wooden Pleasantville kind of thing.

i wouldn't bother seeing tarnished angels in the pan-and-scan version that is available on video at the moment. in fact i wouldn't recommend seeing it at home at all. there's something about it that demands a big screen. it gets revived a lot--i've seen it in connecticut, nyc, boston, and chicago. incidentally, there's a moment in that film that is cribbed from schlussakkord.

(x-post)

Am, I'll look out for Schlussakkord. I've seen A Scandal in Paris, which I thought was cute, though not the greatest.

I've avoided most of his "war" movies (except A Time to Love and a Time to Die, which is heavy and really good), simply because I'm squeamish; but I'm gonna watch them now. There's this one, Battle Hymn, that sounds just heart-wrenching from the description on the back of the box.

i think sometimes "sirk films" have been so enshrined by contemporary film studies people, though, that we forget that he was working in a genre and working with screenwriters and cinematographers and producers that made many other films, some of them with many of the same qualities as sirk's great films. sirk was no doubt one of the great artists of the hollywood (and german!) cinema but the virtues of his films are not his alone, nor are they exclusive to films he directed. unfortunately because of the afore-suggested vicissitudes of film studies, women's pictures from this era not by name directors are rarely screened. (sometimes you can catch one on TCM.) i'd recommend for starters madame x starring lana turner, produced by ross hunter (sirk's most frequent producer in the '50s), shot by russ metty (sirk's collaborator on the big famous Universal melodramas), costumes by jean louis, etc. it's instructive to see what conventions were native to the genre, what aspects of the style might be attributed to metty et al, and--by contrast-- what makes sirk's contributions unique. most studies i've read of sirk don't take much trouble to frame him in that sort of context.

(x-post)

i liked far from heaven but my thoughts are far from (cymbal crash) clear on the subject. i don't think it was a simple gesture of condescension toward the '50s by any means.

Yeah, Am, that's a great point (re: non-Sirk films); I have, for a long time, wanted to see lots of old movies in, heck, not just Sirk's "genres," but all kinds of genres. (Having seen a fair amount of "noir," I feel comfortable noting what was unique in these noir-ish Sirk films I recently saw; but I'm sure Sirk wasn't the only one putting the focus on strong female "noir" protagonists in unique and compelling ways, either). I'm pretty ignorant on the scope of movie history in general, so I appreciate the suggestions (I'll seek out Madame X).

Oh, and I don't think that Far From Heaven was merely being condescending; but I do think that a big part of its "work" was ironic engagement in '50s stereotypes, which didn't really do much for me. (Before the crosspost, I wrote: "I mean: the way the kids acted and talked! the way dennis quaid acted and talked!") I don't remember the movie all too well... but I do remember thinking that most or all of the characters seemed like cutouts made for ideological purposes, rather than characters.

Coding wouldn't be the right word, but there's certainly a lot for gay people to identify with in Imitation of Life. And subversive isn't the right word for Written on the Wind, since making bad/destructive characters attractive and somewhat sympathetic is basic to interesting plots and characters (and the psychological explanations were, if anything, the opposite of coding, since a surfeit of outfront explanations and symbols were thrown into your face at every moment: e.g., SHE IS COMPENSATING FOR LACK OF PARENTAL CONFIDENCE AND ATTENTION BY BEHAVING AS WILDY AS POSSIBLE), but it's amazing the way the film follows the intensity of Dorothy Malone's wildness: she's dissatisfied, she'll taunt and tantalize, she's scooting around in her '50s sportscar and it's a bright color across your movie screen, taking us to trouble. You need the wide screen to illustrate her tantrums in all their energy and garishness.

and to call the films "subversive" is, as you suggest, to downplay the need for films to have an element of danger in them, and to make 1950s hollywood out to be much less pluralist and...liberal than it was. what distinguished some of sirk's films was not their political daring but their intensity and fluency in highlighting and sustaining the relevant plot points and emotion.

i'm still not sure if haynes understands this--i think he does, so i think people might be misunderstanding his project in "far from heaven" as a result of misunderstanding his relationship to sirk and the film that frank mentions, the reckless moment--another avowed influence. by the way that film was remade recently, as the deep end, which was ok.

i don't think the sign of the pagan reference in the long day closes was an auterist in-joke, especially since that film is hardly well-known today especially not as a "sirk film." i think it's just part and parcel of the love for movies of a certain period--hollywood movies and english movies--that suffuses davies' autobiographical films. and if anything the house of mirth (which i admire, but think was fatally flawed by miscasting) recalls ophuls' films more than sirk's big weepies--they don't have the bold color design and creeping vulgarity of the latter. but really it's the whole range of hollywood melodrama, in addition to art films like those of bergman and so on, that was davies' model.

Too bad it was moderated by this bearded film professor/Sirk expert who kept asking loaded questions that the actresses weren't much interested in, and interjecting his own (bland) opinions and readings of the movie. (At one point, after an awkward silence when neither of them could answer his question about who else had been tested for their roles, the prof moved along with the comment, "Well, I happen to know the answer, anyway.")

It turns out that Susan Kohner is the mother of those two "American Pie" guys (they stood up in the crowd and took a bow), which I thought was a fairly bizarre connection.

Christ, Film Forum audiences can be the worst. I remember a critic in the Voice once complained that a screening of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, of all things, there was marred by audience laughter. I saw The Beast of Yucca Flats there about ten years ago, and damn, while it IS a famously godawful film, it's more of a venal, depressing, crawl-into-a-ball-and-die kind of godawful rather than a riotous and spirited kind of godawful (cf. Showgirls, The Apple), yet the whole audience was forcing the laughter out of their lungs at even the most entropic scenes. (And it was definitely forced rather than spontaneous laughter: a little too loud, high, staccato, and fast.)

And don't get me started on the time I saw Grey Gardens...

And at one point at this very screening Wed. night - this was at L.A.'s Egyptian Theater - a guy on the other side of the theater erupted at some laughers: "Will you shut up and give the film a chance!? It's STYLIZED!" I was bemused, as there wasn't too much laughing, really, and it was more or less at "appropriate" points in the movie. (There is quite a lot that's funny in it, mostly "intentionally," I guess I would say. I was laughing at stuff, and exchanging glances with my girlfriend, who had never seen it before.)

It seems to be universal that every crowd viewing "Imitation of Life" will burst into laughter and applause when Sandra Dee says, "Oh, mother! Stop acting!" Gets 'em every time.

on the one hand, it can be a kind of honest reaction, on the other, it seems often above all a controllable social reaction, somewhat forced. (but so are so many reactions to films, and other things.)

my snobbishness (or whatever it is) often gets the better of me, although i don't really regret that. the worst experience i had of this kind is during a screening of "ordet," when the crucial moment came and a few people behind me were chortling. i felt imposed upon (especially since i was crying my eyes out at the time), as though this person or persons had decided that a scene of resurrection was simply too silly to countenance, and--perhaps i was being paranoid--i took this to mean that he was thinking that dreyer, and the many sympathetic audience members the film has found in 50 years, are all somehow beneath his chastened view of things.

when i see a moment of extremity, extreme stylization, whatever, in a film, i often sort of let out an unanticipated grunt of awe, which can even resemble a laugh, but it's a laugh of being so impressed as to be beside myself. i find those sort of moments in films produce several reactions at once and i seem to make different sorts of sounds depending. that's not the same as howling laughter though.

pedantic sirk critics are many, unfortunately; not many critics that i've read seem to have really looked at the films for themselves. tag gallagher is one who has, i'd recommend his essays on sirk (though he prefers "scandal in paris" to any of the late universal pictures, oddly enough).

favorite moment in "imitation of life": "look, a falling star!", which i find to be totally inexplicably moving *and* funny, one of those moments where i tend to smile widely and/or make strange little noises in appreciation.

this was in boston ca. 2000. i think most of the audience was sympathetic.

i guess the way i view it, despite myself perhaps, is that that guy--for example--failed a test. it's not a good way to view things, because it can lead to a vision of cinema where directors are vying for the most patience-testing, most extreme forms. i.e. a world of von triers. there are other and better ways to go about making art. but i think crucially that neither sirk nor dreyer were ever after any sort of prize for extremity, quite the contrary. and it's the evident sincerity of their respective films (though i esteem dreyer much more, i should add) that makes me appreciative, and have so little patience for those who don't have any patience or imagination face to them.

reading many reviews of the passion showed a lot of critics determined to NOT be moved by something--and it makes me wonder how much an emotional reaction to art is voluntary.

I do this too. : \

i gotta see imitation of life! it's my mom's favourite movie!

'so please, no flash, no necking in the pew,
or snorting just to let your neighbour know

you get the clever stuff, or eyeing the watch,
or rustling the wee poke of butterscotch

you'd brought to charm the sour edge off the sermon.'

[...]

I do this too... kind of a guffaw of disbelief and delight. I haven't seen nearly enough movies that get this out of me, of course.

and it's the evident sincerity of their respective films (though i esteem dreyer much more, i should add) that makes me appreciative, and have so little patience for those who don't have any patience or imagination face to them.

And this is what I'm really wondering - what is it about the particular kind of "stylization" you see in Sirk movies (I haven't seen any Dreyer films - YET) that makes them so "risky" in this regard - so likely to produce uneasiness and maybe derisive laughter from modern-day (art house) audiences (but is it just modern-day? how did people respond back when these movies came out?) - whereas other movies that are very effectively and famously "stylized" to produce certain kinds of engagement and responses are more "safe," i.e. people won't laugh at them? (Obvious big names that pop to mind are Hitchcock, Godard, Kubrick, etc.)

I don't think it's as easy as saying, "The stylizations in those other movies are designed to 'distance' the viewer in a certain way, and lots of people 'know how' to appreciate those techniques as 'intellectual and ironic' - while movies like Sirks' use techniques to engage/"implicate" the viewer [see Am's citation of Von Trier as another kind of "implication"] that are more likely to make people feel uncomfortable or 'duped,' and so they laugh, etc."

I mean, that kind of explanation comes to mind, but I know it's more complicated than that. All these kinds of "stylization" are different, anyway; and I'm sure there are kinds of "engagement" in Godard and "distancing" in Sirk that makes it even less clear-cut a distinction. But there's clearly something different going on at a Sirk movie, when it can make a certain kind of supposedly film-savvy crowd uncomfortable in a way that some violent, here's-the-camera, here's-the-money Godard film won't. (But now I just feel like I'm just piling all this on the back of some hypothetical Film Forum-goers.)

Is it all just a matter of what kind of "stylization" someone personally finds effective, anyway? Am I "failing the test" when I laugh at "Titanic" or a Spielberg movie because I feel like it's just cheaply, uncreatively, ineffectively "manipulative"? Maybe Sirk (or whatever some other present-day examples are of movies that work like Sirk's, like the "Spotless Mind" anecdote above) just don't "work" for some people, and that's okay? Or does it really come down to more concrete things like "sincerity" (as Am describes), a sustained engagement with a set of ideas (visual and otherwise) and what's done with them, etc.? (Obviously I think the latter.)

cf

i think the code stuff was a way for me to say,i love the style, the melodrama and the beauty. esp. the beauty...holy fuck is the house that they move into cumworthy.

Not much to add to this thread that amateurist, ryan and others haven't already said. I do remember reading in the book Sirk on Sirk DS claiming he used his theater background a lot in thinking about his stories, particularly Greek tragedy. At first I thought this was incredibly prententious but I have come to believe it- thinking about the the Hadleys in Written On The Wind as being doomed to their fate makes a lot of sense and makes them even more sympathetic.

I probably agree with this but his influence on Fassbinder adds to his classic qualities

Polyester.

i hate the i-got-the-reference "HA!"

You people clearly need to see movies in sensory deprivation tanks.

The best recent essay on Sirk is by James Harvey. It appears as a chapter in his wonderful book "Movies in the Fifties."

For meta-significance, you should now watch its meta-remakes Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Far from Heaven.

i don't understand.

As for All That Heaven Will Allow, had the movie ended with Wyman entombed before her TV set, it might have been a masterpiece.

right because getting a man is the fucking be-all, end-all.

Churlish Alfred! Forgive the first Mrs. Reagan!

Yeah, Written, Tarnished Angels and Imitation are my favorites ... There's also a restrained (for him) b&w should-we-adulterate suburban soaper, There's Always Tomorrow, that reunites everyone's favorite killers Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.

riiiiiight.

this movie gives me hope in an american bohemia, it makes me happy that wyman saved herself from the suburbs, it makes me glad that rock hudson's charachter gor fucked, the tidy and neat ending literally gives me this tight, warm, optomistic, hope in the middle of my belly.

that film is incredible, in fact for sheer camp that's the one that ranks with Written on the Wind. the 'happy ending' is particularly brutal, it didn't feel restrained at all. extra bonus: Fred's wife is played by Joan Bennett, who later played Madame Blanc the director of the ballet school in Suspiria and it is a trip to see her playing a matronly housewife

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha ughhhhhhhhh. < /krusty the klown>

e.g. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/36/sirk.html

maybe b/c im smart enough to realise how unrealistic the "bohemian life" is and how desperatley i want it all to work out.

Enrique got a good anti-Cinemania zinger in there but basically Eric OTM.

yes yes and yes

there are many others: it happened one night, miracle woman

No one's told me if Lured is any good.

i don't know, but i'm going to watch in a few weeks, so i'll tell you

Sirk is really disturbing... his best films like fever dreams of soap operas. Just because post-contemporary theorists made his arty rep doesn't mean they don't properly explain what made them successful.

Using Cinemania as representative of cineastes is like using Being There to knock, I dunno, anyone who watches TV.

OK. Fair enough. Plus, as the Tag G. article sort of indicates, there's a little bit of cake-and-eat-it-too w.r.t his critical standing ("he's great with or without Brecht")...

(1) his films have a life beyond his reputation. imitation of life and others still favorites for many, many people. many get played on tcm quite often.

(2) plenty of filmmakers' reputations are much more exclusive to hackademia. whatever that means to you.

(3) you haven't really said anything about sirk. all of those things you write could be true and many of sirk's films could still be awesome.

(4) [sticks tongue out]

possibly, but none i can think of. some filmmakers have a rep which is pretty much *sustained* in this way, but my point is 'douglas sirk' is a *creation* of hackademia. as a young hackademic, it means all too much to me.

you haven't really said anything about sirk. all of those things you write could be true and many of sirk's films could still be awesome.

that's true -- i think his films are okay, but awesome, not so much.

i like sternberg, some anthony mann, some nick ray, some welles (honest!), some lang, some hitchcock, some fuller... i'm not really an auteurist, though -- i'm not interested in mann's 'strategic air command' or ray's 'flying leathernecks'. if a film is bad, i don't see the point in trying to dust for the director's fingerprints in order to show the cohesion of his work. maybe that battle needed fighting *in the fifties*, but it feels very distant, now.

Hmmm, never saw The Horse Soldiers, but get the point, and I've seen enough Fords to think that the ratio is way off. He made 15 features in the '50s: I've seen nine of them, 3 or 4 of which are great, a couple more really good and even the least are nice entertainments like Mogambo or The Last Hurrah.

That's so awful!

I wish TCM (or any channel) would show some of the non-"touchstone" movies sometime. My Sirk wishlist on the TiVo never brings up anything new. Looks like "There's Always Tomorrow" was never even on VHS? :(

so it doesn't matter what the camera is actually pointing at?

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

That's so awful!
I got over it.

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

He was still exploring the acting territory he staked out in Winchester 73?

xpost

not sure what you mean.

Chris Fujiwara contrasts contemporay US audiences' laughter at Sirk's films vs Tokyo viewers' reactions:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/tears-without-laughter-20080818

good article. I can't watch Sirk films in theatres, especially the Castro -- it's not that there aren't scenes in Written on the Wind where I haven't experienced totally involuntary burst of laughter, it's just that the completely out of control bursts of camp hyperbole cascade right over into a genuine emotional response, and in an audience of 800+ there's always going to be the sound of derisive laughter echoing somewhere in the theatre kind of bringing you down.

so these days it seems like Sirk is best seen with a group of friends that you're on the same page with?

hurts that there's still no "There's Always Tomorrow" on DVD, that's the one I really need to see again

Milton otm but that article reads like the Adbusters trouble with hipsters

criterion's putting out magnificent obsession at some point, apparently

as for myself i often laugh at the silliness in his movies but paradoxically it also makes me more susceptible to sympathy for his characters/situations

pink sox

I'm not sure there's a way of avoiding laughing! The laughter of a hip theater crowd signifying that they're above Sirk's little tricks is obnoxious, but I'm glad Sirk provokes these reactions. I always feel nauseated and moved, like mid eighties Bob Dylan.

Imitation of Life was shown last month in NY at a Chelsea theater screening hosted by a drag queen MC. Must to avoid.

Yes, heaven forbid a film appeal to people other than film snobs.

Good article but the problem isn't with Sirk alone; it's with practically all of classical Hollywood cinema. My students howled at Scarface (Hawks 1932) as if it "were a cross between Tex Avery and Russ Meyer." It IS a problem because it assumes the current standard of Hollywood realism will remain the standard forever, i.e. that it's not historically and culturally contingent. So I tell them exactly that which usually does the trick.

That said, laughter is never so cut and dry and thus very difficult to write about much less legislate. I started an essay on it at the beginning of the summer. But I abandoned it after a good deal of research (grrr) since I couldn't avoid coming off as a complete snob (which some might approve anyway). Or a complete hypocrite. As mad as I get when people guffaw at Hawks or even my beloved Andy Milligan, I was fully in support of the derisive snorts that greeted Jimmy Stewart's "It can't matter to you" in Vertigo. And fwiw, no one chuckled once during a screening of Imitation of Life I attended in Montréal or drew undue attention to my tears when the lights came up. (How about an article on Canadian reactions to Sirk next?)

Still, Sirk's mise-en-scene was extraordinarily critical of the characters within it, often in ways much more subtle than the infamous grabbing on to the model oil derrick. (This propensity is particularly pungent in the devastating There's Always Tomorrow which is indeed a must-see.) As such, I'm not sure the man himself would have minded some laughter. So this very carefully worded sentence may be distorting Sirk's M.O. a bit:

"Audiences’ ironic appropriation of Sirk—apart from being, like, so 1990s—thwarts the nonironic acceptance on which basis alone the films can work (as I believe they work ideally) as emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict."

For one thing, ironic appropriation may be so 1990s, but the "ironic appropriation" of Sirk happened well before that. Also, I think "appropriation" is the wrong word here because Sirk was an ironist. If later audiences are appropriating his films ironically, then they were appropriating them the way Sirk himself conceived them. So while I agree that they're "emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict," that detachment stems from an ironic stance Sirk takes in relation to his characters. In fact, he felt he didn't step back far enough with Imitation of Life.

And thank gawd, sez I. One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites. If Sirk had his way, it might have come off like something by, I don't know, Fassbinder (who I'm definitely NOT dissing here).

So the laughter may be signifying not that the audience is "above Sirk's little tricks" but rather perfectly in step with them.

But if "I always feel nauseated and moved, like mid eighties Bob Dylan" isn't husband material, I don't know what is!

your text

my text?

I don't want to "legislate" vs snarky laughter, I just usually don't wanna be there when it happens.

"It can't matter to you" IS a good chuckle (tho I can hear Hitchcock's better on "The gentleman certainly know what he wants").

One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites.

Now, see, you phrased with elegance what I was unable to an hour ago.

Oh, honey, anyone who can link mid-eighties Dylan to Sirk is elegance personified.

"The gentleman certainly know what he wants"

That is a genius line.

YOU WERE A VERY APT PUPIL

heaven forbid a film appeal to people other than film snobs.

Eric, the folks who howl their way through old movies at Film Forum and "Chelsea Classics" drag screenings are not run-of-the-mill hoi polloi, who I think do a better job of entering into the spirit of a period film. They are hipster assholes (and in the all-gay screenings, unbearable Marys) who should be home watching contemporary "golden age" TV.

(This doesn't even apply exclusively to period films -- the FF audience pretty much ruined the last Werner Herzog movie)

http://www.criterion.com/content/images/full_boxshot/457_box_348x490.jpg

In January

Magnificent cover!

Damnit, I just scanned the thread and now I really want to see There's Always Tomorrow, which of course still isn't out on any stateside release.

I can burn you a copy if you want.

Cool. I'll drop a line soon.

Swoon on that DVD news.

OK, I wouldn't blame an audience for laughing through MO.

I always get the pipe-smoking prophet in that movie confused with the sub-genius guy.

Maybe he doesn't even smoke a pipe, but he has the same crazy glint in his eye.

Lots of funny stuff in Rock Hudson's Home Movies about that dude constantly touching Rock. Damn good actor, Otto Kruger. He played a VERY different, downright evil character in Hitchcock's Saboteur. You wanted to beat up his face in that one, you did. And for the millions of Joan Crawford freaks here, he stepped aside so JC could have Clark Gable in Chained.

OK, I wouldn't blame an audience for laughing through MO.

I laugh throughout every Sirk movie, but in the good way.

SPOILERS

Please tell me you don't laugh when she gets hit by the car...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/movies/homevideo/20dvds.html?_r=1

otto krueger's character in this is truly insane

oh, i didn't know the '30s version was gonna be in this.

shd I see Interlude? June Allyson, ay yi yi.

On film, yes. On video, eh. Definitely lesser Sirk.

Mark Rappaport on Sirk & Hudson:

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/935

Callahan on Interlude (many spoilers):

http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2009/02/trouble-water-douglas-sirks-interlude.html

While the Stahl films in the Anthology series are fairly similar in tone and style, the Sirk films vary quite a bit in their approach: perhaps because of Sirk's evolution, perhaps also because of the different demands of the troublesome adaptations, whose overt melodrama is the least of the problems they pose....
If, in my opinion, Stahl came off better than Sirk in the Anthology series, it's partly because Stahl's solemn detachment gives him needed distance from dubious material. Despite his reputation as a subversive director, Sirk essentially commits himself to the emotions that his authors and producers are trying to project - a much trickier game.

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/532

Cease and desist.

Magnificent Obsession is almost dumb.

Like I said, subgenius.

i wanna see tarnished angels again:
one of his best films, but somehow it is rarely shown anywhere

ok, the Stahl version of MO is so much sillier he doesn't even try very hard, letting Dunne & Robert Taylor (cute) play it like a romcom.

anyone besides James Redd endorse my seeing this tomorrow?

http://bam.org/view.aspx?pid=1550

I'd go if I could. John Gavin rowrr.

was NRQ banned because of this thread? i think so.

It's not about John Gavin, it's about the rubble, it's about the black market, the black market goods, the black market girls. Try these goods, buy these goods. Oh wait, wrong movie.

KJB?

Like a moth to a flame...

Yes, by all means, go see A Time to Love and a Time to Die. It's quite different from the meticulously upholstered Ross Hunter epics or the acidic Americana of the early 1950s partially because much of it takes place amongst the rubble of WWII. But Sirk's genius for character/camera placement is very much in evidence even in these reduced settings. Perhaps even more so since it comes off just as intense and melodramatic as anything else he did.

Yes, go!

It's a good film, but John Gavin is poor man's Rock (also, ick on Remarque echoing end of All Quiet, if that finale is his). Lovely new print tho.

Klaus Kinski in a bit! I liked how all the signage was in German. otoh, Don DeFore from "Hazel"...

it's a good film, but there are better,sharper Sirk movies on his filmography.
Though the mise en scene and camerawork are excellent and the contrast between the war and the romantic story is remarkably shown,the film is too long, and Sirk seems to lose some power when he is out of his regular territory.
(Tarnised Angels, another adaptation made more or less at the same time, is a much better Sirk-out-of-his-style movie imo)

Glenn Kenny on aTtL&aTtD (and Sirk's personal angle):

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/593

Hm. Hadn't realized until I read response to that linked article that the female lead was the woman who played the umlaut-brushing-up secretary in One, Two, Three.

yeah, I saw that in her credits!

I do like all those scenes in the rubble of Bremen. The location stuff was all in Berlin, acc to the iMdB.

'written on the wind', oh man. obviously a lot of bait for subtext hounds, but this film is completely entertaining and just beautiful to look at. the shot at the end, w/dorothy malone sitting at a desk with a model oil derrick: A+++

One of my favorite movies of all time. In some ways I like it more than All That Heaven Allows for it's simplicity.

They threw me out of geology school for having rocks in my head.

Or maybe it's: He got straight As in Geology. I got thrown out of school for having rocks in my head.

Summer Storm out on DVD now. Quality a bit soft but waaaay better than my ancient copy taped off Canadian TV. Minor Sirk but it stars the incomparable Hugo Haas.

is written in the wind the one where he's got the wild child sister who fucks shit up 4 every1?

anyone read this book on the making of Imitation of Life? (published last year, now in p'back)

no. link?

http://us.macmillan.com/borntobehurt

imitation of life was my bubby's favourite movie.

Is bubby British for servant?

s1ocki made his grandma tie his shoes?

between this and the a serious man thread i think ilx needs a serious jewish re-education

Douglas Sirk was Jewish?

Read some of that book. Lots of interesting background info but much of the time it seemed to be more about the guy who wrote the book than the movie itself and it started to get on my nerves.

Don't start reading those 33 1/3 monographs is my advice.

Haha. I liked the one by Franklin Bruno about Armed Forces but I know what you are saying.

Mouthbreather Jeff Wells "takes down" Sirk, Glenn Kenny responds, etc.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/02/respectful_sirk.php

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-reputation.html

This needs to be repeated:

I happen to think that a lot of the critical response to Sirk takes the "subversive" angle too far. I don't think, for example, that there's anything particularly "coded" about Imitation of Life; it's a completely sincere statement on race in America that works within the conventions of a Ross Hunter/Fanny Hurst melodrama.

holy shit those comments.

wait--is jeff wells the numbnuts who didn't "get" sunrise?

if so, then probably best to let him fester in peace

I have a Film degree and on an intellectual level I understand the depth and value, and I know if there's one thing that gives serious film theorists a boner, it's films that "comment upon and criticique the socioeconomic times of their making!" It's the central thesis of serious Film Study, but I've always found it a rather arbitrary one that merely provides a vaguely Marxist intellectual justification for... a bunch of lazy motherfuckers getting a degree for sitting around watching movies for four years.

But again... I can't IMAGINE any of the bros I grew up with or any of our dads, uncles, sporto brothers sitting around watching IMITATION OF LIFE or WRITTEN ON THE WIND.

"Hey, son, you gonna watch the Browns game tonight?" (clicks open beer)

"No, Dad, I rented this DOUGLAS SIRK MELODRAMA that takes a jaundiced view of the patriarchal authority, racism and sexual repression inherent in Eisenhower-era suburbia!"

SMACK. Christ. Just trying to picture running THAT one by my Korean war vet uncles or linebacker brothers or awesome old man and not catching a Robert Loggia-on-youthful Zach Mayonnaise Thai brothel BEATDOWN for being such a pussy.

Not saying this to BE bullying or homophobic or overly macho, but come on.... Even in your thirties, forties, you guys can REALLY sit around watching some gay-camp soap opera from 1954 and not feel like a TOTAL douchebag? Don't you picture like Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson or your own dad peering in on you thinking, "Christ, what a walking vag."

...

i think the most pussy move in life is being terrified of shit that doesn't appear masculine

Results 1 - 10 of about 535,000 for robert loggia on youthful zach mayonnaise

Kehr on the new 4-film TCM box, including The Tarnished Angels:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/movies/homevideo/17kehr.html

just watched written on the wind again the other day

really need to see tarnished angels

more on this set:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/10/12/douglas-sirk-filmmaker-collection/

Must...have this.

i'm not quite as dismissive of sirk as i was a decade ago ... but sorry, i still prefer the original imitation of life to the sirk version.

Douglas Sirk was Jewish?

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:20 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

no, but his wife was.

there's always tomorrow is probably my favorite these days. it's devastating!

But his first wife wasn't
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/feature-articles/sirk-2/

In 1929 in Germany he had divorced his first wife and married a Jew, a fact which the first wife used after Hitler won power to get a court order barring Sirk from contact with their son, then eight, whom she was turning into a Nazi and the top child star in German cinema: Claus Detlef Sierck. Sirk was able to see his son only in movies, sometimes as a Hitler Youth. And when he fled Germany, Sirk had to leave his son behind. Toward the end of the war Claus was drafted, sent to the Russian front, and reported missing in action. After the war Sirk came back to Germany, and searched in vain for traces of the son he had left behind. He asked interviewers not to publish these events during his lifetime.

yeah, that supposedly inspired "a time to love and a time to die"

on All I Desire

http://cinephilepapers.blogspot.in/2012/11/douglas-sirks-all-i-desire.html

Glenn Kenny contemplates Faulkner, Sirk, The Tarnished Angels.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/06/faulkner-and-sirk-pylon-and-the-tarnished-angels-melodrama-and-art.html

Juanita Moore, dead at 99.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/01/01/juanita-moore-oscar-nominated-actress-dead-at-99/4281241/

She requested a private ceremony.

http://s.mcstatic.com/thumb/7922043/21353248/4/flash_player/0/1/imitation_of_life_1959_funeral_scene.jpg

http://lordheath.com/web_images/oliver_hardy___they_go_boom_.jpg

bio post on Moore from the Siren:

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.de/2014/01/in-memoriam-juanita-moore-1914-2014.html

Robrt Stack's (most) subtle performance (ever?) really makes Tarnished Angels work.

Rock's drunk monologue is really not all bad, given the purple prose and impossible plot twisting it requires.

Agree about Stack but that Hudson monologue reminds me of Madonna's British accent.

more like Kurt Cobain's (B+)

Taza, Son of Cochise(Rock as an Apache) screens tonight in 35mm in NYC, but if you're not so lucky a decent print is on YT (and it was released about 5 years ago on a TCM 4xDVD pack).

year-end NY retro includes many rare screenings, including four from the '30s

http://www.filmlinc.org/press/fslc-announces-imitations-of-life-the-films-of-douglas-sirk-december-23-january-6/

And I was thinking of going to the UK, dammit.

I have to say of the stuff in the NY retro i've hardly even heard of before, i'm prioritizing The First Legion for the pairing of Charles Boyer and William Demarest. As Catholic priests!

http://ferdyonfilms.com/Legion%201.jpg

http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/2010/the-first-legion-1951/575/

I believe the geezer seated next to Bill is HB Warner.

It's on YT, if you gotta.

has All I Desire played yett?

series hasn't started, but i've seen that one

how is it? I like what Sirk said about her:

Unfortunately I couldn't give her any great parts in those days. I did see All I Desire again. And you know there is nothing, NOTHING the least bit phony about her ever. Because she isn't capable of it. That insignificant little part she did with me and she played it all right out of herself. And yet she is so discreet -- she gets every point, every nuance without hitting on anything too heavily. And there is such a tragic stillness about her at the same time. She never steps out of it and she never puts it on, this deep melancholy in her presence...

...But that was a rare thing. She impressed me all the time as someone -- what can I say? -- someone who had really been touched by life in some way. Because she had depth as a person. I wish I could have done a really great picture with her...

(decidedly NOT available on YT)

solid, fine Stanwyck

Universal sells a DVD

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/dvd-of-the-week-all-i-desire

http://shop.tcm.com/all-i-desire-dvd/detail.php?p=889101

so I've been consuming forgotten, second-rate Sirks. This George Sanders period vehicle is an odd one (a rare chance to see clean-shaven Akim Tamiroff). I like Carole Landis in it...

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-forgotten-douglas-sirk-s-a-scandal-in-paris-1946

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yHZJ2zJW0w

Seem to recall seeing at Lincoln Center an eternity ago but otherwise have no recollection.

today, Palance as Attila in 'scope

^very dull except for a few flashes by Jack P

To New Shores, his German '37 feature:

https://nseuropa.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/zu-neuen-ufern-1937/

so this schedule is hell on weeknights, but i hope to finish up w/ The First Legion and Summer Storm, at least.

So the best of the little-knowns i caught was last night, DS's second feature Das Mädchen vom Moorhof, analyzed here by KJB:

http://bozelkablog.blogspot.com/2015/12/moor-sirk.html?m=0

Mit Zarah Leander, oder?

Not that one, no. I did see La Habanera with her... strange. A tropicalepidemic / bad-marriage melodrama.

Really bummed that Magnificent Obsession & Written on the Wind haven't been released on blu-ray by Criterion. their All That Heaven Allows restoration is just incredible

Pretty sure WotW has been teased as a forthcoming upgrade.

oh sick, looking forward to it

Then again, I could be wrong. They do a doodle tease every month and I feel like I'm still waiting on some of them years later. For sure, Silence of the Lambs is coming back to the CC fold.

IIRC, Universal is handling the actual restorations on those Works, and once they're done, Criterion will put them out.

that’s great to hear. Saw All That Heaven Allows v recently for the first time and it was just unbelievably beautiful, the most gorgeous & creative lighting I’ve ever seen, and those colors...

the shade of blue on the ATHA Blu-ray cover alone...

for those that have seen the blu-ray: I wasn’t bothered by it, but I did notice dramatic color grading shifts every time there was a cross fade (probably happens 20+ times in the movie)

RIP, Dorothy Malone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJC_EBSDMKk

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/fc/74/76fc749dac67584ccf194acdf8d0597c.gif

you hadda go there

goddamn i just watched that movie the other night. rip queen

Good obit in the WaPo that I can’t seem to link to

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dorothy-malone-oscar-winning-actress-known-for-alluring-roles-dies-at-92/2018/01/20/39b347a8-fdf5-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.a5eb33124266

“I came up with a conviction that most of the winners in this business became stars overnight by playing shady dames with sex appeal,” she said in 1967. “And I’ve been unfaithful or drunk or oversexed almost ever since — on the screen, of course.”

Perhaps her finest role came in “Written on the Wind,” a 1956 melodrama set in her home state of Texas and directed by European emigre Douglas Sirk.

“An agent kept calling me that there is a director from Europe who wants you and only you,” Ms. Malone told the Chicago Tribune in 1985, explaining how she got the part. “He was every woman’s dream of a director. He was very Prussian, wore a scarf, and maybe he even had a walking stick. If he liked you, he was so much fun. I found him utterly charming.”

Ms. Malone played an oil baron’s spoiled daughter who wasn’t shy about satisfying her out-of-control desires. Her character, Marylee Hadley, drinks too much, smokes almost constantly, shimmies to mambo music in skintight gowns and tries to seduce various men, including Rock Hudson, who is in love with another woman, played by Lauren Bacall.

In one scene, Ms. Malone drives off with Hudson in a red convertible sports car.

“I’ll have you,” she says, giving him a beckoning, sidelong glance. “Marriage or no marriage.”

When Ms. Malone won her Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1957, presenter Jack Lemmon tried to get her to cut short her speech by putting his wristwatch in front of her.

jeez, watch the spoilers, NY Times

Her final film appearance was as a smiling lesbian ax murderer in “Basic Instinct” (1992).

Probably the wrong thread for this, but ...

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/universal-rock-hudson-biopic-all-that-heaven-allows-1203155807/

change that title

uh

how can you name a biopic of an actor after one of his most enduring films? is there a precedent for this?

Struggled for a bit with just how ridiculous Magnificent Obsession is, but around the time Wyman reveals to Hudson that she's known his true identity pretty much since the beginning it finally clicked with me: the movie is about the allure of fantasy, and how buying in to a romantic illusion is preferable to cynicism. Which makes it just about the perfect material for a Sirk picture.

I gotta rewatch it now that it's been upgraded. Yeah, compared to All That Heaven Allows it felt so frivolous and absurd to me at the time. even Written on the Wind had too much camp in it

Maybe it's not good but I just discovered Douglas Sirk did a "nuns do crime" movie???? pic.twitter.com/eZFvguRbkT

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) July 19, 2020

Whoa. I hope it's better than the other movie he made with Colbert

https://www.criterion.com/films/636-written-on-the-wind

<Dorothy Malone oil derrick gif>

Did Sirk really refer to happy endings as “emergency exits”?

Has anyone watched THUNDER ON THE HILL yet?

It's a convent movie!

Interview video accompanying WRITTEN ON THE WIND on Criterion is worth it. Robert Stack says some interesting stuff. Sirk says he wanted to work with James Dean, had noticed his star quality early on, but the studio passed, and somehow Rock Hudson became his leading man instead.

Sirk says Hudson was a truck driver (which is true) and that he “took him off the truck.”

Dorothy Malone was a big prude in real life!

Which of course makes perfect sense in the end.

Robert Stack RIP

That stinks. He was an interesting guy. Not a great actor, but he worked with and was respected by Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk, etc. In fact Sirk said he was the only lead actor in _Written on the Wind_ and _The Tarnished Angels_ to understand Sirk's ambitions for these films. Apparently during down time on set they would hang around and talk about Eastern philosophy.About 10 years ago my friend spotted him wandering around a L.A. movie theater, wearing an _Unsolved Mysteries_ jacket.

I did hear about Dorothy Malone being a prude somewhere along the way

Zugsmith and Sirk both talk at length about having to convince her to do the famous dance in WotW. Sirk says some very interesting stuff about the dual nature of actors. Malone herself says that the difference between her onscreen persona and her offscreen self made for problems in her personal life, her own version of Rita Hayworth’s observation about how “‘men fall in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.” (When did she actually say this, if she indeed said it)

She had very pretty eyes, it’s a shame she was a prude. Cindy Wilson of the B-52s has similar eyes.

"Lava" is about that last scene in WOTW.

Holy shit

Is it really?

Oh I see.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburstag!

Here comes Mona to deliver the birthday cake

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/574f0b9a37013b939ab0b866/1476107320628-INCNB0USJP565YJ5WY1Y/image-asset.png?format=1000w

<3

Still a few days left to watch THUNDER ON THE HILL!

There's a Douglas Sirk retrospective on at AFI Silver (https://silver.afi.com/Browsing/EventsAndExperiences/EventDetails/0000000080) and The National Gallery of Art (https://www.nga.gov/calendar/film-programs/douglas-sirk-torture-ecstasy.html). Any recommendations? Anyone going?

The last 10 minutes of Imitation of Life...the only time I weep in American film.

A few times in All That Heaven Allows do it for me also

I'm supposed to join friends at a bar, but, uh, Imitation of Life is on.

Wondering if that means you are born to be hurt.

I've had a sudden urge to get back into Sirk, so have been catching up on a few things (ordered a Blu-ray that compiles Imitation of Life – one of my favorite movies, period – with the 1930s version, for $12!).

Re-watched WOTW last nite... what a film. It's been decades since the first cluster of times that I saw it, and I think I "appreciate" it even more now (some things hit different as you get older). I won't rehash any praise for it, other than to note that Robert Stack's performance is just fantastic.

It did leave me with a few tangential thoughts/reflections:

a) When Kyle, in his climactic rant, says that Mitch has always been sponging off the Hadleys (or something to that effect), there seems to be a kernel of truth to it. Why does Mitch live with them? I don't think it's ever made clear, but my assumption is that Mitch's mother died at some point, and his father felt he couldn't raise him; and Jasper Hadley (Kyle & Marylee's father) was happy for Kyle to have Mitch's influence in his life? Did I miss this being spelled out(?) Even if so, Mitch is a grown man now... why doesn't he have his own place?

b) Speaking of which, is Kyle & Marylee's mother ever mentioned? It's kind of fascinating how the mothers are totally absent, and the boys' backstory is set up (in Kyle's airplane conversation with Lucy) as structured by the competing influence of these two imposing fathers – but neither father seems particularly full of "rizz." Mitch's dad is pretty mild-mannered for a supposedly legendary rancher; and despite Kyle's talk about how both he and his own father know that Kyle could never fill his dad's shoes, Jasper Hadley doesn't seem disappointed in Kyle or his playboy lifestyle (he just wants him to stay sober, and maybe settle down). For a powerful oil baron who owns a town, Jasper comes off as a semi-distracted, managerial type who's fairly benign, and even friendly enough (if quick to reach for a gun when his daughter is disparaged).

Is it a "fault" of the film that the fathers don't loom over the story the way it seems like they should; but instead recede in the background? Or just a reflection that its real focus is elsewhere?

c) The film's Wikipedia page has this "Social Commentary" section:

In terms of its social criticism, the picture is best understood as a parody of the ultimate achievement of the American dream. The Hadleys have achieved the American ideal of material affluence, but they are unhappy and isolated. Their acceptance of materialism's ideology makes it impossible to question its foundations. The Hadleys rule their town, and the film's opening scenes show endless rows of phallic oil towers and the massive corporate skyscraper; the Hadleys are everywhere, but emotionally and spiritually they are nowhere. One of the film's central topics is the impact of 1950s materialism on the American character.

Also, I watched a bit of an interview w/Sirk himself (in the disc's bonus materials) – he says the central theme of the film is "the death of the American middle class"(!), and that's why it resonates so strongly. Obviously I can't (and won't) reject these interpretations – but am I wrong for feeling that the Hadley's wealth actually isn't so important to the central story? The film presents itself as a saga of a wealthy family (and prefigures, maybe influenced, true sagas like Dallas) – but the story is not really so epic so scope, and in fact centers around a rather small-scale domestic love triangle and one character's feelings of inadequacy.

Obviously, Kyle's anxiety and despair over his perceived "impotence" is related to not living up to his legacy, being able to fill his father's shoes, etc... and his obsession with having offspring seems more related to wanting to serve in a "father" role himself than actually wanting a kid or family. But all that is not necessarily tied up in his family's wealth or power... you could tell the same (or very similar story) involving characters of much more modest means. Not sure where I'm going with this, other than I think the "rich oil family" aspect is – if not necessarily misdirection – than at least a kind of "window dressing" to what's really at the core of the film.

Oh, one more thing: why does ask Mitch to drive her to town on that morning when she’s going to see the doctor, and then insist he pick her up after the appointment? Kyle and Marylee observing them in the car sort of sets the final sequence of events in action… I’m sure Lucy didn’t intend for that to happen(?) Was she anticipating the positive news from the doctor, and thinking that she could nip Mitch’s feelings in the bud (which he was basically on the verge of laying out for her) by revealing her pregnancy to him then and there?

*why does Lucy ask Mitch(…)

WOTW is what Giant shoulda been (I like Giant).

I didn’t realize or remember, until Sirk mentioned it in that interview, that James Dean had an early role in a film of his… Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

Man, that scene in All That Heaven Allows where she meets his friends for the first time and they’re all having a big party. That’s the part which really stayed with me, only saw it for the first time this holiday.

I didn't know any of this (from the Wikipedia page for WOTW) – it's really interesting. I had assumed the underlying novel was pure fiction, maybe with a lot of excess detail that had to be extracted for brevity:

The screenplay by George Zuckerman was based on Robert Wilder's 1946 novel of the same title, a thinly disguised account (or roman à clef) of the real-life scandal involving torch singer Libby Holman and her husband, tobacco heir Zachary Smith Reynolds, who was killed under mysterious circumstances at his family estate in 1932. A film version of the novel was optioned by RKO Pictures and International Pictures in 1946, but the project was shelved because of threats from the Reynolds family. Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the novel after absorbing International Pictures, and began developing the film in 1955. Zuckerman made numerous alterations in his screenplay to avoid lawsuits from the Reynolds family, among them shifting the setting from North Carolina to Texas, and having the family fortune originate in oil rather than tobacco.

I wonder if that's why Lauren Bacall's character, Lucy Moore, feels somewhat marginal and only sketchily developed in the film... to avoid a lawsuit from Libby Holman? It's not really clear why both Mitch & Kyle fall so hard for Lucy – which isn't a slight on Bacall, she's just not given a lot to work with.

And she wasn't a compelling actress when not with Bogart tbh

Someone needs to watch The Fan again

Someone needs to watch these commercials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtUyGTwy6dY

MMMMMM

It's telling that when Sirk followed up the success of WOTW with The Tarnished Angels, featuring the same lead actors in (very roughly) analogous roles, those actors were Stack, Hudson, and Malone... Bacall wasn't in the picture, so to speak.

God, the guy made so many f'in movies in the '50s... between 2 and 4(!) every year, from '51 to '58.

Finished the 1934 Imitation of Life (“I want my quack-quack,” indeed); then started up the Sirk version and watched through the Christmas scene before turning in for the night. This movie just vibrates on an incredible frequency… there’s nothing like it.

Think I finally need to watch Summer Storm.

I’ve been watching Imitation in chunks… due in part to time constraints, but also to “savor” it yet purposefully dilute its impact, in a way. Certain scenes are almost overwhelming to me, even after multiple past viewings. I’m not generally affected by films, on that kind of an emotional level. This one’s a masterpiece, though, and it seems to become more powerful as I get older.

OTM. There’s some clunkiness with the nominal leads which needs to be put in perspective, the same way the romantic leads in Marx Brothers movies need to be ignored, and sometimes one has to overcome any kind of initial resistance to the message and being preached to, but man does it pack a punch.

still need to read that book, Born to Be Hurt.

Just thinking about the scene when Juanita Moore brings the snowboots to school and young Sarah Jane slides under her desk in mortification might make me well up a bit.

xp Huh, I’ve never heard of that book… just looked it up.

Have you ever read Movie Love in the Fifties? I read it years ago, and loved it. I don’t really know anything about the guy, but his passion and analysis are wonderful. (He also has a very good, though somewhat different, book about 1930s romantic comedies.)

That book is kind of famous but I haven’t read. Took the other one out of the library recently but didn’t really have enough time to dig into it

It's a marvelous book; it's rare that I agree with every one of a critic's insights like I do Harvey's about IOL.

The 1934 version is good in its own way. Colbert is well-cast.

Think I finally need to watch Summer Storm.

James – I watched this over the weekend (knew nothing about it). Have you seen it yet?

No

I remark that it is still available on TUBI though.

George Sanders and Linda Darnell though. I liked them in Forever Amber and Hangover Square. And Edward Everett Horton!

It is indeed on Tubi, and worth watching. Very good script and performances… It’s “literary”-feeling (based on a Chekhov novel), but in a way that works. Darnell is really something… first time I’ve seen her, I think.

Buncha Sirks on Prime rn: Heaven Allows; Magnificent Obsession; Written On The Wind; Tarnished Angels; A Scandal In Paris; and Lured.

ooh written on the wind is on there now!? yay!

no dice: wrriten on the wind doesn’t come up on my search >:(

You have to search that one by title, it just got added last night and doesn't show up under a Sirk search.

I should give Heaven and Mag Obsession another shot… neither was a favorite, but probably time to revisit.

i did search by title! it’s not on Prime that i can find currently

That's weird. It's showing up for me on a title search five slots downscreen (between the rentable A Summer Place and the streamable Pal Joey) on my laptop with a VHS cover for some reason.

wotw came up on prime for me when i searched by the title, i'm in the us. one of my fave sirks

grr stupid prime

ah found it

third time was a charm

Imitation of Life and There's Always Tomorrow coming to Prime in August!

Cool!

I probably won't follow through on this, but what fun it would be to run an "Asshole Kids from Douglas Sirk Films" button poll.

I've got:

--The sons from All That Heaven Allows & There's Always Tomorrow (conveniently played by the same actor)
--The daughter in All That Heaven Allows
--Susan Koener in Imitation of Life
--The daughter in Magnificent Obsession
--Stack & Malone in Written On The Wind

Most of them end up coming to Jesus, or at the very least end up meeting Him.

the son & daughter from All That Heaven Allows are all-time assholes, i want to fight them every time i watch the movie

XP My pick would be the son from ATHA, for the whole "Mom, you're not going to sell the house (to go live with Rock" ---> "Mom, we're selling the house (since Rock is safely out of the picture)" narrative arc.

when that fkn piece of shit son buys her a goddamn tv set and doesnt come home for christmas i’m googling his college to send a hit squad to his dorm room

THE NERVE OF THESE FUCKIN KIDS

very very into the getting furious at ppl in Douglas Sirk movies movement

also Rock Hudson’s cool besties who catch lobsters & have key parties w the local townfolk? so down

the son & daughter from All That Heaven Allows are all-time assholes, i want to fight them every time i watch the movie

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl),

all-time villains. I want to defenestrate the son and ensure he falls in hot tar.

when that fkn piece of shit son buys her a goddamn tv set and doesnt come home for christmas i’m googling his college to send a hit squad to his dorm room

forgot about this but now I'm pissed off all over again!

Stack & Malone in Written On The Wind

I think it was Robin Wood who suggested that these two become sympathetic figures as the movie goes on, and Hudson and Bacall are seen as self-righteous scolds.

also Rock Hudson’s cool besties who catch lobsters & have key parties w the local townfolk? so down

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, September 29, 2024 4:25 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

seriously, been on the lookout for this crew irl ever since i saw the movie

you know who else i've wanted irl since i saw the film all that heaven allows dir douglas sirk (1955)?

rock hudson

I think it was Robin Wood who suggested that these two become sympathetic figures as the movie goes on, and Hudson and Bacall are seen as self-righteous scolds.

― Halfway there but for you,

Yep. David Thomson too.

I think it was Robin Wood who suggested that these two become sympathetic figures as the movie goes on, and Hudson and Bacall are seen as self-righteous scolds.

― Halfway there but for you,

Yep. David Thomson too.

Well, the term is relative. The daughter in Magnificent Obsession redeems herself by the halfway point of her film too.

I didn’t realize or remember, until Sirk mentioned it in that interview, that James Dean had an early role in a film of his… Has Anybody Seen My Gal?

― Wooly Bully (2005 Remaster) (morrisp), Sunday, January 7, 2024 1:54 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Kino put out a Blu this year that I picked up in their most recent sale and screened this afternoon. It's the most subdued '50s musical, modest little production numbers spread out in a confectioner's choice satire of pre-Depression small town (pre-suburban) mores. The jerk son from ATHA & TAT plays a nice guy! An endearing deep cut, and yeah, James Dean has bit role that he totally owns. Kid was going places.

Comp of his German films coming up from Eureka.

Saw that, very tempted

It’s interesting to me that All That Heaven Allows was so influential; whenever I watch it, I find it somewhat difficult to engage with. Even the “forbidden love” plot feels so thin, bc Hudson’s character isn’t really anybody. If anything, I guess the movie feels most about Wyman’s character taking control of her own life, and the romance story feels like a fairly rickety mechanism to express that theme.

It is a little funny how Hudson seems like the least outdoorsy outdoorsman ever… that never-been-worn jacket, lol (just found this interesting web page on his wardrobe).

To put it another way, the film feels to me like a somewhat rote contrivance – as opposed to the hugely creative, audacious, and deeply involving contrivance of something like Written on the Wind.

Had the very same reaction at a screening of it last year. The Hudson character in the first part of the film simply isn't believable. The reformed version of him is believable, but that's as you say a contrivance. (I initially read "rote contrivance" as "role contrivance" and I guess both are accurate).

whereas it's slowly become my friend, in part because the domestic scenario -- the tensions between Wyman and her awful, awful kids -- convinces me. Wyman deserves credit for its believability.

*become my favorite lol

Hudson is totally unbrlievable yes but I don't see why a wish fulfillment fantasy dreamboat in a melodrama should be realistic!

All That Heaven Allows is def my favourite Sirk too, not least because the film preserves in glorious colour midcentury modern American furnishings, decor and design, and has good mean fun observing the television set invading and colonising the domestic space. It's a contrivance of mise en scene.

Had the movie ended with the scene where Wyman sits entombed in front of her new TV set it would've been perfect.

Hudson is totally unbrlievable yes but I don't see why a wish fulfillment fantasy dreamboat in a melodrama should be realistic!

― a ZX spectrum is haunting Europe (Daniel_Rf), Monday, May 12, 2025 2:06 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah what's missing in this revive is this is a very gay movie for gay men. the rock hudson fantasy may as well be a mythical foundational text in that world. same with the wyman arc. she is basically standing in as a gay man who leaves her suffocating family life for authentic love and a somewhat cozified and denatured masculine fantasy with size queen tendencies (though i would argue still drawn with enough depth that it retains its vitality - the thoreau stuff and the hippie friend group helps).

what is understandably cheese and caricature in the eyes of many is, for me, a very brave and quite beautiful expression of idealism. not without its blind spots of course. a lot of gay butch fantasy is in a similar zone for reasons. tom of finland is another example.

Love and Life: A Song
By John Wilmot Earl of Rochester

All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone,
Like transitory dreams giv’n o’er,
Whose images are kept in store
By memory alone.

The time that is to come is not;
How can it then be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot;
And that, as fast as it is got,
Phyllis, is only thine.

Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows;
If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heav'n allows.

Lovely posts, map.

I'm an outlier, and I think, based on our conversations about Sirk, dear Morbs was another: I accepted my three or four beloved Sirk films the same the 1950s public did, i.e. as expert melodramas. Career-best performances by actors, shrewd manipulations of interior design, creative lighting, etc. My response to Written on the Wind when I saw it in 1996 at the height of the Sirk reappraisal was, "This rules!"

No one's wrong about watching them as allegories, though, as melodramas reflect the rules of the society game as written at the time of their release.

How do y'all rate Magnificent Obsession? I may have only seen that once (twice at the most), back when I was first exposed to these films – which, yes, was in '96/'97 (in school).

Saw it again last week; a notch below the two I've mentioned. I like Wyman the less she does.

I probably asked before but has anyone read Born to Be Hurt?

Magnificent Obsession has that batshit speech early on that makes you feel like you're watching a scientology video or something. Doesn't have the same emotional resonance as All That Heaven Allows for me but I admire its weirdness (plus ofc it looks gorge).

I should check it out again, when the chance arises... looks like it's not streaming anywhere right now.

Magnificent Obsession has that batshit speech early on that makes you feel like you're watching a scientology video or something. Doesn't have the same emotional resonance as All That Heaven Allows for me but I admire its weirdness (plus ofc it looks gorge).

LURED and SHOCKPROOF both on TCM right now and leaving at the end of the month. Never seen either.

Lured is pretty good... not sure if I've seen Shockproof

I caught Thunder On The Hill on Criterion Channel before it left last month: it gets labelled as a Noir, but it's closer to a minor Hitchcockian Thriller--with NUNS!

Ann Bylth--non-Sirk asshole kid Veda from Mildred Pierce--plays the condemned but possibly innocent murderess whom Sister Claudette Colbert races against the clock to save.

Lured is wonderful.

I caught Thunder On The Hill on Criterion Channel before it left last month: it gets labelled as a Noir, but it's closer to a minor Hitchcockian Thriller--with NUNS!

Ann Bylth--non-Sirk asshole kid Veda from Mildred Pierce--plays the condemned but possibly innocent murderess whom Sister Claudette Colbert races against the clock to save.

_Lured_ is wonderful.

Lucille Ball, George Sanders, Boris Karloff, and Cedric Hardwicke -- how eclectic can you get?

I said TCM but I meant Criterion. Trying to watch SHOCKPROOF sinced I can watch LURED elsewhere. So far so good,

since

Shockproof is pretty good, marred by a stiff villain and some very obvious studio interference with Sam Fuller's (!) script.

Literally just got done with Lured, which effin' rocked.

Made you post this? In every old British movie ever

Yes.

Very good, sir!

Stiff, non-menacing villain somehow added to the Sirkiness of it all. Seems like that guy was mostly a television actor who appeared on almost every single show during his heyday, at least according to his Wikipedia article, although nowadays he is pretty much forgotten.

Would have been a different movie if that guy was played by, say, Cagney or Widmark, by Dan Duryea or Robert Mitchum.

The new-ish Criterion Blue-ray of WOTW is luminous.

In the included featurette Robert Stack surprised me with his subtlety and intelligence.

Yeah, I remember thinking the same thing about hin.

Him even

I remember the Airplane guys saying that of all the old school stars they worked with Robert Stack was the one who TOTALLY got what they were up to.