Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind 1956

 Here, in Written on the Wind, a condition of life is being portrayed, and, in many respects, anticipated, which is not unlike today's decaying and crumbling American society.

--Douglas Sirk

When I first saw this movie, thirty years ago at The Museum of Modern Art, I was somewhat suprised that much of the audience was laughing.  Part of it, certainly, was seeing Rock Hudson as a heartthrob not long after his death from AIDS and the revelation that he was gay, part of it was the over-the-top quality of the melodrama itself.  Sirk and cinematographer Russell Metty made a dazzling beautiful/garish film, with the kind of attention to detail and color that, now that just about every film is in color, is rare indeed.  The film, like many of Sirk's films, works on multiple levels, including melodrama/soap opera and an undercurrent of satire.  Hudson and Lauren Bacall are generally in brown, green and gray while the alcoholic husband of Bacall (Robert Stack) and his promiscuous sister (Dorothy Malone) are in yellow, orange and red.  And this really is a drama with music, the score by Frank Skinner adding an additional level of luridness.

Sirk, of course, would use a less garish palette in his more subdued work, especially in All That Heaven Allows (1955), a harsh film about suburbia that morphs into a softly-lit Christmas card with something of a happy ending.  At this point in my life I find I tend to prefer Sirk's black-and-white films, especially There's Always Tomorrow (1955), an ironic title that conveys the suggestion that, even if there is tomorrow we still have obligations and things we shouldn't change, even if we could.