Douglas Sirk

It’s scary how little Sirk is mentioned in discussions of filmmakers.

Let’s change that: leave some thoughts on this director.

The colors, the colors! I could eat those films.

I like the look of his films but have never cared much for the stories. Too soap operaish for my tastes.

i’ve never seen a sirk film. what’s the best one? the best introduction to his style, and why?

Start with the 3 Criterion releases (well, 2 right now… Magnificent Obsession coming in January).

His style is consistent throughout these 3.

And as a hint (in the hopes of encouraging some genuine exploration), it’s not exactly what he’s showing you necessarily (colors/story), though it plays a big role as well, but how.

Definitely check out “All That Heaven Allows”. This guy was brilliant and if you can get over the surface soap opera narrative, there is A LOT there. Truly worth a look.

I once asked a friend which director he’d pick to have a retrospective of his/her work at our local cinematheque. His answer: Douglas Sirk. Back then, I had not seen a Sirk film and so found his choice odd (I had heard about his “soap operaish” reputation). But then I saw Written on the Wind and Sirk instantly became a top prioirity director. I have now seen 5 of his films. Now I also hope for that retrospective.

There certainly IS a lot there. It may be “superficially superficial” (to borrow from Ophuls) but critics like Laura Mulvey have understood how to dig deeper. To counter the “soap operaish” attack I offer the words of Andrew Sarris (from “The American Cinema”): “One big obstacle to an appreciation of his oeuvre is an inbred prejudice to what Raymond Durgnat has called the genre of the female weepies as opposed to the male weepies, particularly the kind from Italy that are hailed as ‘humanist.’” Perhaps this rejection of Sirk’s cinema is really a rejection and fear of one’s femininity.

The Tarnished Angels is great. Written on the Wind is great, too, the way the opening credits sequence is edited to the romantic song. The autumn leaves spilling into the big marble foyer of the big white house. That’s a kind of genius. To overdo it. In Sirk’s films you see humanity at its most heightened. What’s sadder than the mechanic left behind at the cafe in Tarnished Angels at the wake for Robert Stack? You see that he has nowhere to go, and not just for the night but forever, he’s lost his best friend, the whole life he was living. Another thing he did that was genius was to cast Rock Hudson against type over and over again. Sirk took this all-American lug and cast him as a dropout from society in All That Heaven Allows, the flunky in Stack’s shadow in Written on the Wind, the boozy idealistic reporter in Tarnished Angels. He was really allowing Hudson to covertly express parts of his true nature. Only a great director can have the kind of chemistry with actors and actresses that Sirk had. And I haven’t even started talking about Imitation of Life yet!

Sirk is an incredible filmmaker. I have watched All That Heaven Allows so many times, its become one of my favorites. Same with Written on the Wind. A lot of his films deal with the individual who is not of society who is of it, but does not go by it. Sirk loved characters who have a lot to lose and a lot to gain, mostly to gain, that is what makes him a great storyteller. All that heaven Allows deals with the protaginist desire to be with rock Hudson her Gardner although her good name might be tarnished if the secret is let out. Some of his stories are about succeeding or failing. Written on The Wind is defietly one of them. The funny thing is the contrast between content and context. The color are so vibrant and alive, but the characters themeselves are full of social anxieties, gossiping neighbors, drunkin Robert Stacks! (thats was just for laughs) It seems the scenery is sometimes is our only hope for happiness. Excited for Magnificent Obsession, I still need to see imitation of life. keep on sirking!!

I like that, Matt. “Keep on Sirking!” That should be on a t-shirt or something.

I believe Sirk used Hudson’s relatively limited acting range as part of his Brechtian alienation effects. Hudson usually played a flat character whose lack of dramatic depth as a lead usually played as a foil to the more interesting side characters. I am only speaking of the movies I have seen (WRITTEN ON THE WIND, ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS), but in both cases Hudson’s one-dimensional character acts more of a symbol (the embodiment of good-looking Americanism, perhaps) rather than a complex character in itself. I believe Sirk did the same thing with John Gavin’s character in IMITATION OF LIFE — Gavin functioning in a Hudson role. For example: Mitch Wayne is a foil to the much more interesting Kyle Hadley in WRITTEN ON THE WIND; Ron Kirby is purely a symbol for an alternate lifestyle to the much more conflicted and fully-developed Cary in ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS; and Steve Archer is just the token romantic interest who remains the same throughout the entirety of IMITATION OF LIFE (along with Lora), playing foil to the more split Annie and Sarah Jane.

I don’t believe Sirk was looking to really trying to “covertly express parts of [Hudson’s] true nature,” as you said, Justin. Rather, I think he was making use of Hudson’s static good looks and limited range to accentuate other characters and to add to his ironic, Brechtian techniques. Thus, Sirk knew he was casting against Hudson’s character, as you suggested, but not to exploit any inner nature of Hudson’s but almost the opposite.

I have not seen TARNISHED ANGELS yet and am eagerly awaiting the release of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. Does anyone know if Criterion has the rights to any more of Sirk’s work?

Just this week I saw my first Sirk film, Written on the Wind. Through the first part of the movie, I was very unsure, but I found the color very beautiful, and once I got into the overacting and melodramatic story, I was completely blown away. I will definitiely be checking out All That Heaven Allows, and probably many more after that.

After All that Heaven Allows, I would also love to watch Ali: Fear Eats the Soul by Fassbinder and Far From Heaven by Todd Haynes, as they are both adaptations or remakes I believe. Should be interesting to see three takes on the same story.

Keagan, I’m glad you were able to enjoy WRITTEN ON THE WIND. It is my favorite Sirk (so far). In order to greater appreciate Sirk I would definitely suggest further reading about him and his style. Sirk is all about subtexts and irony, so the overacting and “melodrama” is being used for reasons that go deeper than the surface. The most amazing thing for me to find out about was the self-consciousness with which Sirk was constructing these films — he had a level of irony and detachment that matches those of us as modern viewers. Thus, he was creating and inverting the Hollywood melodrama at the same time. The stilted acting and unbelievability of the plots are done purposefully, detracting us from the story in the same way the bold colors and odd camera angles take us away from the film to become self-aware of it being a film, something constructed.

And yes, Fassbinder and Haynes’s films make for a great triple feature mini-marathon. I am getting into Fassbinder now and he is incredible. I wrote about my own viewing experience on my blog: http://kazuakiwatanabe.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-melodramatic-weekend.html

Keagan, hi, Fassbinder loved Sirk and basically worshipped his aesthetic of using melodrama as a candy-colored coating for harsh truths about society. One is supposed to be conscious all the time that this is a film, these are actors pushing each other around, that life itself is artificial. Not artificial in the sense of meaningless or lacking emotion — as you can see, Sirk more than most directors made films directly from emotions. But those emotions are so hard to have and hold onto in a mechanical world. Sirk said he wanted to direct Imitation of Life based on the title alone. Fassbinder took Sirk’s story of a middle-aged widow who falls in love with her younger gardener and transformed it into a story set in contemporary West Germany, where an even older widow falls in love with a young Moroccan immigrant. This movie was made in 1973, just a year after the tragedy of the Munich Olympics when Arabs were very much being racially profiled in Germany. Naturally the relationship has problems. Many elements from the Sirk film come back in Ali but in a sort of re-fashioned way; as Fassbinder said, it’s a harsher film than Sirk’s. (It’s also a very tender film as well.) Sirk saw Ali with his wife and graciously said that he didn’t think it owed anything at all to his All That Heaven Allows, but was a beautiful masterwork in its own right.

Douglas Sirk is the man! Always treated like a third stringer and fundamentally disagreeing with Hollywood’s pat 1950s outlook, Sirk subverted as many conventions as he could. He found fault with happy endings, unrestrained materialism, delusion, and unrealistic goals present in Hollywood films. Having slightly greater freedom mid-career, Sirk intensified this subversion. Consequently, when his later films are viewed ironically, they are a treasure trove of pessimism, moral lessons, double entendre, and cattiness. Sirk specialized in technicolor melodramas that don’t take themselves seriously in order into slip in darker, edgier themes. In other words, his films are camp with teeth, a supposedly disposable product injected with irreverence and something lasting.

Watching Sirk’s later films for the first time is like discovering a secret Almodovar, who had to keep his humanist absurdism in check because of his era.

The technique Sirk is best known for is the Unhappy Happy Ending. His characters fall off cliffs, lose the love of their entire family, or the respect of their entire community in the penultimate scenes. Then, without explanation or resolution, the characters are healing, have their family beside them, and the repsect of everyone back in the last scene. As if Sirk is telling the viewer, “the ending is what I am supposed to show you. The second to the last scene is exactly how this would play out in reality. Take care.”

WRITTEN ON THE WIND or IMITATION OF LIFE are excellent, and I feel his strongest work. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS and TARNISHED ANGELS are also great too.

SHOCKPROOF is decent, and has the double advantage of being penned by Samuel Fuller. It isn’t as great as one would expect from the two men, but it holds up pretty well as entertaining suspense from the 40s.

HAS ANYONE SEEN MY GAL? is a dated, but airy comedy that features the first appearence of an uncredited James Dean as a dude at the soda fountain.

MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION is ok. It has a dearth of subtle, brutal ironies that are present in most of his other melodramas, though the moral lessons are front and center.

@Justin Biberkopf
Almodovar also cites Sirk as a big influence. Fassbinder’s liner notes on the Criterion ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS disc are hilarious. Definitely some of my favorite “film criticism” ever. Fassbinder summarizes Sirk’s hollywood films and conjectures on the motivation of his overly fraught characters.

After Hollywood, Fassbinder also helped the retired Sirk secure a teaching position at a Munich polytechnic, teaching students how to shoot film. The last films in Sirk’s filmography after IMITATION OF LIFE are projects he directed with his students. If anyone has any copies or more information on those, I’d love to know.

Vellaem,

Sirk directed Fassbinder in a short film called Bourbon Street Blues, based on a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. I’d love to see it some day. I wish it had been added as an extra on one of the Criterion Fassbinder’s.

Yes, Fassbinder really lays it on the line when he writes about Sirk. “All the people have wide mouths,” I think he says at one point. And “they don’t f—k enough.”

Magnificent Obsession is one of the most improbable stories ever told. Like All That Heaven Allows, it’s based on a Reader’s Digest “inspirational” testimonial-type thing. Sirk had to have had disdain for its hallmark card-like sentimentality. Yet there’s one scene in it, the scene in the beer garden with all the colored lights, that is truly beautiful. I like your insight about the penultimate scenes. It’s true, now that I think of it. One could say that the ending of Heaven is somewhat ambiguous (Fassbinder’s much more so — and by the way, Haynes’ ending in Far From Heaven is just downright tragic), and certainly at the end of Written on the Wind everybody is more or less destroyed. What future can Hudson and Bacall really have together? It’s almost like the Fall of the House of Usher, you expect the whole mansion to sink into the ground.

@Justin

The University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) suspiciously neither lists the later films in their student catalog nor their library’s catalog. I’ve seen old festival programs stating that BOURBON STREET BLUES was shown at Centre Pompidou (2005) and Moma (in the 90s). The film is treated as a museum artifact for Sirk and Fassbinder retrospectives, but no torrents/VHS/DVD-R copies floating out there that I can find.

The film is between 16-30 minutes long, and according to Sirk “is less a story and more an atmosphere.”

@Kazu

“I think he was making use of Hudson’s static good looks and limited range to accentuate other characters and to add to his ironic, Brechtian techniques. Thus, Sirk knew he was casting against Hudson’s character, as you suggested, but not to exploit any inner nature of Hudson’s but almost the opposite.”

Spot on, I think, and deserving of a repost.

Oh lord, I would marry Imitation of Life if I could. That movie simply doesn’t grow old. Magnificent Obsession coming is a real joy for me. I’m looking forward to that one. But basically all his films are equally great old classic tearjerkers in my opinion. The soap-opera feel that other posts mention just add to this. It really puts you in the time-frame that these films were originally released in my opinion. When I see these big glaring Technicolor dramas, I feel like I’m immediately back in the 1940s-50s watching this for the first time in a grand old movie house. . .

EXPRESIONISMO ALEMAN !! + exilio world war II = es magnifico! miren el contexto y descubriran un autor.