Written on the Wind (1956)

My recent emphasis on the films of Michael Powell and Hayao Miyazaki have lead me away from Douglas Sirk movies, but I go back there to with Written on the Wind, a favorite of many of the directors fans. If films like Magnificent Obsession and All that Heaven Allows didn’t cross that boundary into the deliberately over the top, I defy you to watch this movies gloriously camptastic and overwrought opening teaser/title sequence, and not agree that that line has been crossed. Second generation Texas oil millionaire Kyle Hadley sets the wheels in motion in this plot, and while I just can’t really buy Robert Stack as the playboy type, his inferiority complex to ancestorly poor best friend Rock Hudson is certainly fascinating. In fact the whole Hadley clan is a bundle of psychosis, they’re pretty quick to draw pistols when they feel slighted. In many ways this is a forerunner to Dallas, but the psychiatry is Sirkian, its meant to be indictment not vicarious naughty fun. While the story falls a little short, and there are uneven moments (the ending felt to quick, and the twist (if you can call it that) flawed in both set up and execution), this is a movie to watch for the directorial style, a cinematography that anticipates Blue Velvet, and Sirks ringing of pathos (mildly effective) and subtext (rather effective) from pulp. 4 out of 5. Dorthy Malone won the best supporting actress Oscar as Kyle’s conniving and sexually aggressive sister.