Climbing Mount Criterion XXVII
Two Sirks...
Films:
All That Heaven Allows (#95, 1955)
Written on the Wind (#96, 1956)
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Sirk wasn't perfect--that deer showing up by the picture window at the end of All That Heaven Allows is too much. And that toddler bouncing on the mechanical pony just after Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) discovers he's impotent in Written on the Wind--that's something beyond too much. But the territory that Sirk worked in is so difficult to navigate well that his lack of miscues is astounding, as is his ability to conjure up layers of moral struggle beneath that shiny Technicolor veneer. The scene where trampy Marylee Hadley (a magnificent Dorothy Malone) prances around her room clutching a photo of her beloved Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) works because we know she's tragically oblivious to the chaos she's inflicted on her family--what she's drowning out is Kyle's despair, along with her father's (legitimate) fear that he's failed both of them. Sirk gets knocked around a bit for being an unsubtle director, but I'm not hearing it. In both of these films he's blessed with great actors--Jane Wyman and Lauren Bacall are both older and more confident (which, ironically, allows them to better play wounded souls), and Rock Hudson finds real room to maneuver within his Noble, Earthy Fella persona. Toward the end of Wind he sits across the dinner table from Marylee; the second she says "You know, I was thinking..." he flinches slightly, and you can feel him bracing.
Despite its strengths, time has made All That Heaven Allows feel overdone--troubling the delicate sensibilities of waspy alcoholic suburbanites is such a well-worn theme that Todd Haynes found it easy to tweak in Far From Heaven. But, it's worth noting, he didn't spoof it. If the interactions between Wyman and Hudson in that film are formulaic, the ones between Wyman and her children are decidedly not; Sirk has a strong handle on the churlishness of children who've idealized their parents and resists any change in them. Indeed, he has a strong handle on churlishness in general--stubborn adherence to values cripples communities, Sirk knows, even while it supports them. (As one smirking townsman says halfway through, their ability to be contemptuous is financed.) Wyman and Hudson are forever getting struck by arrows in the midst of all this, but they never come off as falsely valiant. They play it like two young kids trying to figure it all out--which, if you're an honest director, you're going to play as melodrama.
Films:
All That Heaven Allows (#95, 1955)
Written on the Wind (#96, 1956)
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Sirk wasn't perfect--that deer showing up by the picture window at the end of All That Heaven Allows is too much. And that toddler bouncing on the mechanical pony just after Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) discovers he's impotent in Written on the Wind--that's something beyond too much. But the territory that Sirk worked in is so difficult to navigate well that his lack of miscues is astounding, as is his ability to conjure up layers of moral struggle beneath that shiny Technicolor veneer. The scene where trampy Marylee Hadley (a magnificent Dorothy Malone) prances around her room clutching a photo of her beloved Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) works because we know she's tragically oblivious to the chaos she's inflicted on her family--what she's drowning out is Kyle's despair, along with her father's (legitimate) fear that he's failed both of them. Sirk gets knocked around a bit for being an unsubtle director, but I'm not hearing it. In both of these films he's blessed with great actors--Jane Wyman and Lauren Bacall are both older and more confident (which, ironically, allows them to better play wounded souls), and Rock Hudson finds real room to maneuver within his Noble, Earthy Fella persona. Toward the end of Wind he sits across the dinner table from Marylee; the second she says "You know, I was thinking..." he flinches slightly, and you can feel him bracing.
Despite its strengths, time has made All That Heaven Allows feel overdone--troubling the delicate sensibilities of waspy alcoholic suburbanites is such a well-worn theme that Todd Haynes found it easy to tweak in Far From Heaven. But, it's worth noting, he didn't spoof it. If the interactions between Wyman and Hudson in that film are formulaic, the ones between Wyman and her children are decidedly not; Sirk has a strong handle on the churlishness of children who've idealized their parents and resists any change in them. Indeed, he has a strong handle on churlishness in general--stubborn adherence to values cripples communities, Sirk knows, even while it supports them. (As one smirking townsman says halfway through, their ability to be contemptuous is financed.) Wyman and Hudson are forever getting struck by arrows in the midst of all this, but they never come off as falsely valiant. They play it like two young kids trying to figure it all out--which, if you're an honest director, you're going to play as melodrama.
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