SUMMERFEST '22: Sirk du Soleil

No apologies for the corny title. I’ll be on vacation this weekend and next week, but before I go I wanted to bask in the emotional turgidity of Douglas Sirk’s most saturated technicolor masterpieces. All of these are rewatches and they are all great.

Magnificent Obsession (1954) (rewatch)

Trailers: There’s Always Tomorrow, Thunder on the Hill

This is peak Sirk, with poetically tragic situations and information being withheld from people until it will cause the most devastation. I won’t describe the plot here but it’s like seven or eight soap opera plots rolled into one movie. They really play up what an absolute saint Dr. Philips is and what a shame it is that the horrible Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) survived at his expense. I love that the other doctors and nurses at the hospital treating Merrick say exactly that. I love how the late doctor’s great secret philosophy is basically “do nice things and help people and don’t take credit.” I love that Merrick pledges to adopt this philosophy and after doing one good deed thinks he’s about to get dividends from it. I love Merrick posing as a poor medical student to help the now-blind Helen (Jane Wyman) without her knowing who he is. I love the tortured narrative path that gets us to Merrick *having* to do the surgery because by gosh no one else can do it. And oh man, that ending. Only in a Sirk movie.

All That Heaven Allows (1955) (rewatch)

Trailers: Ali Fear Eats the Soul, Far From Heaven

This is my favorite Sirk and one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever seen. Of course, it’s Sirk’s deliberate indictment of 1950s America and its polite (white) society, so it’s *supposed* to be infuriating. Hudson and Wyman are reunited, with Wyman playing a widow who falls in love with her much younger tree man, played by Hudson, and having to endure the judgment of her snotty friends and the whining of her grown-ass children. Everyone in the movie aside from Hudson and Wyman are trash (well, Agnes Moorehead’s character has her moments). But Wyman’s son and daughter are the LITERAL WORST. Seriously, screw those two and their television “gift.” “Here mom, you clearly don’t have anything else to do because you’re too OLD to be in love and have sex!” I’d forgotten how early they plant the seeds for that, with Wyman’s friend telling her she ought to get a television so she won’t be lonely. In less infuriating news, it was this rewatch that I recognized William Reynolds (who plays the son, Ned) as Gordon from the classic MST3K episode “The Thing That Couldn’t Die.”

Written on the Wind (1956) (rewatch)

Trailers: The Tarnished Angels, Trouble in Paradise

On the surface this looks like pretty Southern Gothic trash, and indeed that seemed to be the general consensus of critics at the time it originally was released. But lurking under all that style is some razor-sharp parody, not unlike Sirk’s previous films (especially All That Heaven Allows). There are some very complex family dynamics that are the centerpiece here, but there are also some complicated romance dynamics and possible unrequited homosexual feelings and maybe even some incest-y vibes. It’s got a fantastic cast that knows exactly what’s expected of them – particularly the indisputable MVP of the whole enterprise, perfect horny queen Dorothy Malone (that last shot of her stroking the oil derrick is *chef’s kiss*). Something I noticed this time was that, in the opening credits, the main cast are introduced as they appear in the opening scene – as in, the scene is happening, we cut to a shot of Rock Hudson reacting to something (title card: Rock Hudson), then the same with Bacall, Stack and Malone. I just thought it was a cool way to introduce us to the main cast, like “hello, you’re watching Rock Hudson! And now you’re watching Lauren Bacall! Now Robert Stack! Now Dorothy Malone!”

Imitation of Life (1959) (rewatch)

Trailers: Imitation of Life (1934), Pinky

There are tons of “daddy issue” movies, but not nearly as many “mommy issue” movies. There used to be, though, and this is one of the best. The “main” story here is Lana Turner, playing Lora, a widow and late-in-life aspiring actress who is raising a young daughter named Susie. She meets Annie, a Black woman who has a daughter of her own, Sarah Jane, who is a couple years older than Susie and passes for white. Even though Turner is the star of the show, Sirk constantly and deliberately pulls the focus away from her to show us more of the life and conflicts of the POC characters. The element of racism is hugely significant to the film, obviously, but I was particularly knocked out this rewatch by the mother-daughter struggles. I have frequently found it difficult to get invested in mother-daughter dynamics in movies, given my own personal not-that-ordinary experience with mother figures in my own life. But I found myself really moved by both Lora’s relationship with Susie and especially Annie’s relationship with Sarah Jane, and I nearly couldn’t watch the end, it was so heartbreaking to me. There are some (probably intentionally) hilarious melodramatic moments in this (“Is a beer can real?”) but for the most part it’s a genuine hanky-destroyer. And that’s even before Mahalia Jackson sings “Trouble of the World.”