The Frame

Here’s my preconception of director Douglas Sirk: weepy 1950s melodramas, lavish color, overwrought relationships, for some reason highly regarded. Not a great preconception, because I have a prejudice against weepy melodrama. But I’ve seen a few more classic melodramas in the past few months and I’m starting to rethink that. And as melodramas go, Written on the Wind is amazing. It’s focused on a dysfunctional uppercrust family–Robert Stack as the drunken brother, Dorothy Malone as his playgirl sister, and Rock Hudson as their best friend, who tries to keep both of them from destroying themselves. Enter Lauren Bacall, who both Stack and Hudson take a shine to, but she marries Stack, though eventually her heart moves more toward Hudson (who Malone also loves unrequitedly). The story of the family’s self-dissolving is melodramatic, but Sirk somehow stops short of making it maudlin. But the majority of my praise for Sirk goes to his mise-en-scene. He uses his camera and sets up his shots and arranges his actors and everything better than anyone I have EVER seen in my life. For that alone, he gets an A++. Whether you like the melodramatic story or not, it’s simply gorgeous to look at–and I thought that would make it shallow, but it doesn’t. It makes it nearly perfect.
Superior