Matthew B
What are we to make of Douglas Sirk, a film director whose image has changed to the point where serious critical perception of him is almost unrecognisable from the opinion once held of him? This is not a change in taste, or an alteration in social values that has dated his movies. It is a more profound shift in which critics and serious film-makers have suddenly found something in his works that contemporaries never suspected.
While Sirk made a number of movies in the 1940s, his fame rests on his work in the 1950s where he produced a series of lush melodramas, including Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life. These films were seen as trashy women's movies, the pre-cursors to later American soap operas such as Dallas and Dynasty. Audiences soaked them up, and they brought in decent box office returns. Film critics viewed them with little respect.
Then from the late 1960s and especially in the 1970s, an extraordinary thing happened. Suddenly the serious film critics and makers of arthouse movies – the people who had ignored or despised Sirk's movies for so long – suddenly reappraised Sirk's movies and found that they were actually rather good.
A whole range of new admirers stepped forward, and a very impressive list of names they make too – Jean-Luc Godard, Andrew Sarris, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar, Wong Kar-wai, David Lynch, John Waters, Guillermo del Toro and Lars von Trier.
How is it possible that the melodramatic soapy productions of the 1950s could suddenly be taken seriously by the establishment? Suddenly everyone started to find things in the movies that had been overlooked for too long. Feminists were impressed by Sirk's portrayal of women. Homosexual viewers enjoyed the camp histrionics, and were not slow to notice Sirk's casting of Rock Hudson, a closet homosexual, in as many as eight of his movies, something that hardly seemed like a coincidence. Marxist critics noticed that Sirk's movies worked well as a satire against the rich.
Most of all though, Sirk tapped into that most modern of concepts, irony. Sirk had always suggested that he was using the model of the mediocre popular melodrama to produce high art, but nobody had taken him seriously. Now people looked at the excesses of Sirk's movies, and realised that they were funny, and not in an unintentional way.
Indeed, a film like Written on the Wind contains so much that is tongue-in-cheek that I am not certain which parts Sirk intends me to take seriously, and which parts he is presenting a humorous subtext. Am I reading too much into his movies, or is Sirk really being satirical?
The story of Written on the Wind was taken from a novel by Robert Wilder. Viewed on the surface level, it can be enjoyed as a piece of frothy drama that is well-made. The story is not so over-the-top that it seems like mere parody. The acting is nicely-pitched for this kind of movie, and Sirk undeniably has a gift for composition. His use of mise-en-scene and camera positioning is truly poetic at times.
The phoney life of the rich is reflected in the look of a Douglas Sirk movie. The colour scheme is bright and glossy. The sets are obviously fake. An early scene in Written on the Wind takes place in a Manhattan office that is transparently a studio with a fake image of the cityscape showing through the window.
Later a scene takes place by a water hole that is obviously a water tank in the middle of a set. When we enter the area in which Kyle and Marylee live, the oilfields are insistently placed in the backdrop so that we cannot miss them. Again we see a picture of them through the window of a studio. Later Marylee and Mitch drive past them. Incidentally the cars in the movie are open-top creations that look as if Barbie should be driving them.
Sirk seems to deliberately choose the kind of matinee movie stars that are almost a parody of themselves. Lauren Bacall is probably too mild and sensible an actor to fit well into this material, and Dorothy Malone is obliged to camp it up. However the male actors are pitch perfect. Robert Stack's bone-dry manner of acting, no matter how ludicrous the material, would later earn him a place in the first Airplane movie.
Best of all though is Rock Hudson, a gay actor playing resolutely heterosexual roles. Indeed Sirk ramps up Hudson's masculinity to comic levels. His character is called Mitch Wayne, a name that instantly recalls one of the most macho movie actors of the age. If Kyle tries and fails to beat up a man who is hitting on Marylee, you can be sure that Mitch will finish the job. I doubt that Mitch's sperm would have had a weakness like Kyle's.
Still this manly toughness is sneakily undermined by a homoerotic subtext. Just why does Mitch always stand up for Kyle and help him out of trouble? When Kyle gets Lucy a luxurious hotel suite, we might overlook the fact that she has a suite all to herself, whilst Mitch and Kyle appear to be, ahem, sharing a suite together.
There are also a number of visual jokes that are easily overlooked, but which seem to suggest that Sirk is amused by the material with which he is working. Marylee's almost orgasmic flashback (audio only) to her childhood with Mitch is followed by the camera swinging to the left to show her initials and Mitch's carved together in a tree. The image is so cheesy that I find it hard to believe that Sirk was being altogether serious.
There are also two deliriously symbolic touches. The first of these occurs after Kyle's doctor informs him (in a café!) of his weak sperm. Kyle stumbles out of the café in a state of shock. As he does so, we notice a young boy playing on a penny-slot rocking horse. The juxtaposition of the child riding the horse and the almost infertile man only served to bring a smirk to my face, rather than cause me to feel any sympathy for Kyle.
The second symbolic image is even more blatant, and occurs at the end of the movie. Left on her own as Mitch and Lucy leave together, Marylee takes hold of a tiny model of an oil well and holds the phallic symbol in her hands. As if that is not bad enough, she does so under a portrait of her father, depicting him doing the same thing. A vague suggestion of incest? A symbol of the emptiness of wealth now rendered small in her hands? A representation of what her sex life will be like now that Mitch has left? You decide.
Douglas Sirk said that Written on the Wind was a film about failure. We can certainly read it seriously on this level. What is intriguing here is that the failure is that of the rich and successful. For all their money and possessions, the lives of Kyle and Marylee Hadley are hollow.
It takes only a small setback to cause them to plunge into dipsomania and nymphomania. Kyle is not even impotent, and Marylee could have moved on and found another man when Mitch rejected her. Instead they easily sink into their addictions as the only refuge to fill up their empty existences.
What at first appears to be a movie celebrating money and conspicuous consumption turns out, on closer inspection, to be a dark and humorous exposure of the foibles of the well-to-do who are not doing too well.
I wrote a longer appreciation of Written on the Wind on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2020/08/24/written-on-the-wind-1956/
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
09/28/23
Full Review
Victor T
Dorothy Malone as Marylee steals the show, especially with her fiery negligee dance to a hi-fi blaring the song "Temptation." Give that woman an Oscar. Um, they did.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
07/17/23
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Mark A
Great Douglas Sirk soap opera with Dorothy Malone as a very bad girl.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
12/16/22
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Audience Member
As fas as melodramas are concerned this Movie is wonderful. The only downside to the storyline was the end sequence where the couple gets into a heated argument. The miscarriage that followed just wasn't believable considering the fight itself wasn't violent enough for the impact to the fall itself. I was also hoping for more romantic sparks between Bacall and Hudson that once again left more to.be desired. Id still rewatch this film and recommend it. But it could have been presented better.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
Full Review
Audience Member
In traditional Sirk style, "Written On the Wind" makes no pretense of being subtle. The drama is as intensely elevated as that of any soap opera, and Sirk has no fear of skirting absurdity. Yet in its passion and lack of inhibition, "Written On the Wind" takes us to the truly giddy heights reached only by the best of melodrama, rendered accessible to us by an uncompromising picture of human vanity and frailty that extends the scope of the film to that of sublime tragedy. There are those who might resist the film's transparent efforts to transport them, and its magic will surely be lost on them. On the other hand, those of us who surrender to Sirk's vision will be more than amply rewarded by an experience far too enriching to ever be written on the wind.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It's a melodrama. The melancholy and the drama are evident, but not very well explained as far as their reasons. We get a few cliches… The behavior of the two wealthy siblings contrasts with their best friend, who comes from a modest background. Whatever causes their behavior and their feelings of sadness is unclear. But those who seemingly have everything are missing something… their father, in his own words, has failed them. The story is thus simple and a bit banal. The movie is engaging for the most part, nonetheless. It is surely melodramatic. Things get out of control pretty fast. As the world is collapsing, Lauren Bacall's character aloofness and uptightness is a bit irritating. Not her best acting but maybe it's all direction. Despite the excessive drama, the end is more of a classic Hollywood movie - this is good.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
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