WRITTEN ON THE WIND

 

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{ imdb// wiki // netflix }

 

I didn’t expect to like this one. Somehow, Douglas Sirk’s movies don’t work for me. I think they are mostly oversaturated melodramas, quite boring at times, but gorgeously expressive and nice to look at. But this one was slightly different… 

Everything I dislike about his movies, pop-trashy component and over the top feel to it, very bland at times and somehow pretentious script and lines, that’s all in there. Still, it works… It did make me roll my eyes occasionally, but it got to me. The best strategy is to just surrender and enjoy it.

 

 

Whenever I’m waffling about a movie I consult Mr Ebert.
And as per usual, he nailed it…

“To appreciate a film like “Written on the Wind” probably takes more sophistication than to understand one of Ingmar Bergman's masterpieces, because his themes are visible and underlined, while with Sirk, the style conceals the message. His interiors are wildly over the top, and his exteriors are phony. He wants you to notice the artifice, to see that he's not using realism but an exaggerated Hollywood studio style…

Films like this are both above and below middle-brow taste. If you only see the surface, it's trashy soap opera. If you can see the style, the absurdity, the exaggeration and the satirical humor, it's subversive of all the 1950s dramas that handled such material solemnly…

To appreciate the trashiness of “Written on the Wind” is not to condescend to it. To a greater degree than we realize, our lives and decisions are formed by pop cliches and conventions. Films that exaggerate our fantasies help us to see them--to be amused by them, and by ourselves. They clear the air.”

 

 

The storyline is so ridiculous, especially when you try to squeeze it in a few sentences. So I’m just gonna close my eyes, paste the words from Netflix,
and move on.

 

Self-pitying Texas oil millionaire Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) tries to cure his alcoholic ills by stealing the virtuous Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) from best friend Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson). When Kyle learns he may be sterile and Lucy becomes pregnant, her green-eyed sister-in-law (Dorothy Malone) stirs up trouble by intimating that Mitch may be the father. The resulting whirlpool of searing emotions leads to disaster in this Oscar-winning drama.

 

 

Btw, kudos to miss Dorothy Malone, who won an Oscar for this one and annoyed the hell outta me. I’m still not sure if that was part of her role, or just the way she acts.

 

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