Written on the Wind - Criterion Collection

Rating:
Summary: FA-BU-LOUSS!
Review: One of my favorite melodramas of all time! This is a deliciously lurid tale of a Texas oil family and how their wealth affects them. Both Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack are excellent, yet I was also impressed by Rock Hudson's more quiet performance as their friend who is emotionally torn between his friendship between Malone and Stack and his feelings for Stack's wife, Lauren Bacall. Keep an eye out for that classic Salvador Daliesque scene involving Dorothy Malone and Robert Keith, who plays her father.

Rating:
Summary: camptastic
Review: One of the great films to come out of hollywood - simple as that

Rating:
Summary: Stiff Dialogue and Fatuous Set-Up Sink the Film
Review: Perhaps one of the most implausible set-ups I've ever seen in a film: An intelligent, attractive secretary played by Lauren Bacall becomes, inexplicably, drawn to an unctuous, rich playboy with absolutely no appeal, played by Robert Stack. The Stack character is so transparent in his moral banktruptcy that it is inconceivable that the Bacall character, with hardly any prodding, falls in love and marries him. Beyond this quick, desperate marriage which contradicts the apparent cool-headedness of Bacall, the film collapses under its stiff, laughable dialogue, so that the film is slow and plodding.

Rating:
Summary: Feuilles mortes
Review: Presented here in an excellent DVD from Criterion, Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind may well have been primarily aimed at cashing in on the huge success of Warners' blockbuster Giant, directed by George Stevens. Both films deal with the doings of Texas millionaires; not so coincidentally, both films star Rock Hudson. But Giant has dated badly, and its epic pretensions seem woefully bloated today. It's forgivable to have made a Classic Comics adaptation of War and Peace as King Vidor did, but far less pardonable to have adapted an Edna Ferber potboiler as it were War and Peace. By contrast, Sirk's lurid melodrama remains a highly entertaining, if at times overwrought vehicle. Certainly Universal-International and Sirk made no bones about catering to the audience's fantasies in depicting the lifestyles of the rich and famous. But in a country where the difference between movie audiences and the rich and famous has often been only one of money, Written on the Wind by no means lacks a basis in reality. The movie's action effectively dramatizes the daydreams many people would act out if they suddenly had the wealth of the Hadley family in this film.
Based on a novel by Robert Wilder, Written on the Wind reprises a plot motif that had appeared before in Vincente Minelli's Undercurrent and Max Ophul's Caught, recounting the fate of a young woman who unwarily marries an unbalanced wealthy man probably modeled upon Howard Hughes. Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), an alcoholic playboy given to sleeping with a pistol under his pillow, is the heir to an oil fortune who weds Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) and takes her back to the family homestead with the intent of continuing the Hadley dynasty. But apparent sterility frustrates his hopes, and when Lucy becomes pregnant, he accuses her of having an affair with his best friend, Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), a suspicion encouraged by Kyle's venomous, scheming sister, Marylee (Dorothy Malone), who spends her spare time sleeping with the town studs.
Freudian family sagas were quite in vogue in 1956, both in stage productions like Tennessee William's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in films such as Elia Kazan's adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Kyle is recognizably a tortured soul in the vein of James Dean's Cal in East of Eden, but the screenplay lacks what a follower of New Criticism would have called an objective correlative. Written on the Wind offers little plausible explanation for its hero's self-destructive behavior. While Kyle's father reproaches himself for having failed to live up to his paternal responsibilities, he hardly seems to have done anything to justify the curse that has descended on his household.
Less naïve contemporary viewers-a fortiori viewers today--might well have suspected other problems lurking behind the false front of Kyle's sterility: both an incestuous attraction to his sister and an unacknowledged homosexual attachment to the more virile and successful Mitch. But nothing of that kind could have gotten past the PCA. When Richard Brooks made his execrable version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he replaced Brick's longing for his dead buddy, the cause of his estrangement from his wife, with straightforward-and sexually straight-adultery between Maggie and Skipper. So Written on the Wind falls back on the stock clichés of the genre, making its enfants terribles into a pair of spoiled rich kids. Nonetheless, Sirk gets away with an outrageously symbolic shot when the film ends with Marylee caressing a phallic-looking replica of an oil well as her substitute for the hunky Mitch, who has eluded her grasp.
Where Brooks changed a serious play into despicable schlock, Sirk was able to inject some class into this febrile soap opera, although with rather odd results. The director's fundamental commitment to aestheticism, a constant of his career, enabled him to treat such an unpromising subject with a remarkable degree of artistic objectivity. In the words of Andrew Sarris, "The essence of Sirkian cinema is the confrontation of all material, however fanciful and improbable." However, Sirks's calculated tastefulness in composing shots, which leaves no detail to chance, clashes with the almost stupefying tastelessness of settings that resemble garish color ads for home interiors or fancy resorts, and unfold before the spectator's eyes a veritable saturnalia of fetishism-commodity and otherwise.
Looking at Written on the Wind almost fifty years later offers something of the voyeuristic pleasure of studying life in the dreary Eisenhower years through a telephoto lens-just as did the protagonist of Hitchcock's Rear Window. At the same time, Russell Metty's color cinematography so strongly accentuates the flamboyant mise en scene that after a while the film begins to take on an oneiric quality-upper middle-class culture as a collective hallucination. But Written on the Wind is no 1960s acid trip like Easy Rider or Performance, and Sirk inscribes his signature indelibly on every image in the film. It is no small tribute to the director's formidable skill as a stylist that in the opening shots he brilliantly establishes the tone of the entire movie that is to follow in what might seem a marginal flourish: the dead leaves that swirl around Kyle and even follow him into the family mansion when he arrives for the confrontation with Mitch and Marylee that will culminate in his death. No harbinger of spring these, the leaves thematically conjoin the mortality of the character, the mortality of an artistic style, and the mortality of the studio system itself in a single breathtaking gesture. At one point, Kyle offers a toast to "The truth, which is anything but beautiful." What better epigraph could Sirk have chosen for this movie!


Rating:
Summary: Overheated Melodrama Played to the Max
Review: Robert Stack is a rich alcoholic married to down-to-earth Lauren Bacall, while his sister Dorothy Malone is trying to get his best friend and rock (pun intended) Rock Hudson, who is actually in love with Bacall. Toss in a small town, a big house, lots of great costumes and campy dialogue, and what you get is one of the most memorable and memorably ridiculous melodramas to come out of Hollywood. Some might describe the film as lurid, and it is, but give director Douglas Sirk credit for not holding back and throwing everything into it. Hudson and Bacall are noble and bland, while Stack and Malone light up the screen with their overheated, charged performances as the alcoholic and nymphomaniac who couldn't get Daddy's love or respect and are wasting their rich lives. The script has some great lines, and a number of fun scenes, including the opening credit sequence, as well as Malone's frenzied dance in her bedroom while other dramatic things are happening at the same time, all to the shaking music. Subtle is ain't, but it's all made and played with such relish that it's hard not to enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Qintessential Douglas Sirk Technicolor 1950s Melodrama
Review: Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall star and Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone support in this quintessential 1950s Technicolor melodrama by the Master, imported German director Douglas Sirk. The plot involves a wealthy oil heir (Stack), the secretary (Bacall) loved by both him and his best friend (Hudson) and a bad-girl sister (Malone, in an Oscar-winning role). But neither the story nor the acting are really very good. What makes this film interesting to watch is the cinematography under Sirk's inspired direction, complete with twisted angles, and the symbolic use of color, mise-en-scene, and mirrors. Edward Platt, "Chief" from TV's "Get Smart" also appears as a doctor. The DVD extras are slight for a Criterion Collection, no featurette or commentary track. There is only a lengthy text discussion that allows you to scroll through descriptions and sometimes stills from all of Sirk's films. This text discussion is well-written and well-researched but will take you a long time to scroll through, and the often redundant images of production stills and lobby cards will make you frustrated. All in all, this DVD is worth watching, though I doubt you would want to view it over and over.

Rating:
Summary: Qintessential Douglas Sirk Technicolor 1950s Melodrama
Review: Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall star and Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone support in this quintessential 1950s Technicolor melodrama by the Master, imported German director Douglas Sirk. The plot involves a wealthy oil heir (Stack), the secretary (Bacall) loved by both him and his best friend (Hudson) and a bad-girl sister (Malone, in an Oscar-winning role). But neither the story nor the acting are really very good. What makes this film interesting to watch is the cinematography under Sirk's inspired direction, complete with twisted angles, and the symbolic use of color, mise-en-scene, and mirrors. Edward Platt, "Chief" from TV's "Get Smart" also appears as a doctor. The DVD extras are slight for a Criterion Collection, no featurette or commentary track. There is only a lengthy text discussion that allows you to scroll through descriptions and sometimes stills from all of Sirk's films. This text discussion is well-written and well-researched but will take you a long time to scroll through, and the often redundant images of production stills and lobby cards will make you frustrated. All in all, this DVD is worth watching, though I doubt you would want to view it over and over.

Rating:
Summary: "Exquisitely elaborate."
Review: Sexuality spills onto the screen with the ultimate representation of lush, lurid Technicolor, in Douglas Sirk's masterly exaggerated melodrama, with an endless list of sexual themes. The movie is hardly the polished soap-opera it's made out to be, because under the inch-thick layer of gloss and pulp perversity of the whole affair, there's an intrigiung story of family rivalrey. The movie also boasts a great cast, with a great mix of stars, which include Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, and Dorthey Malone, with Stack and Malone literally stealing the show as troubled siblings. The movie reminded me of [another movie], which was really B-movie material molded into a masterpiece by a genius filmmaker, which could also be said for this movie...he certainly constructs an excellent drama. "Written on the Wind" is one of the most sexually-charged, wickedly witty, and most exquisitely elaborate movies ever to be put on film, soaked in glorious shades of plush coloring. It will leave an indelible mark, so if you find an urge to wallow in a good romance, step into this vat of sexuality, immorality, and irony. Majestic!

Rating:
Summary: Revival needed!
Review: Sirk, at his best. Melodrama, at its best. Acting, over the top. Music, awesome. Thanks for bringing Sirk type melodramas back, Hollywood. Liked "Far from Heaven" too. For those who liked watching Robert Stack each week in "Unsolved Mysteries" and remember "The Untouchables" its a must see. But good story, twisted, dyfunctional, and entertaining. Malone is magnificent as the nympho who lusts for Hudson. No luck there, but Dorothy does steal the show and the oscar that year for best supporting actress. Bacall is her polished best and Hudson's his stoic best. Good cinematography. > especially in DVD. More revivals of the genre most appreciated.

Rating:
Summary: Revival needed!
Review: Sirk, at his best. Melodrama, at its best. Acting, over the top. Music, awesome. Thanks for bringing Sirk type melodramas back, Hollywood. Liked "Far from Heaven" too. For those who liked watching Robert Stack each week in "Unsolved Mysteries" and remember "The Untouchables" its a must see. But good story, twisted, dyfunctional, and entertaining. Malone is magnificent as the nympho who lusts for Hudson. No luck there, but Dorothy does steal the show and the oscar that year for best supporting actress. Bacall is her polished best and Hudson's his stoic best. Good cinematography. > especially in DVD. More revivals of the genre most appreciated.