Written on the Wind

Written on the Wind is typical Douglas Sirk melodrama, but this one may be the most over the top of them all. Alcoholism, impotence, homosexuality, Lauren Bacall playing a good girl (!), nymphomania, suicide, incest, wife beating, and more blackmail and backstabbing than all of Dallas (* may not actually be true *), it's one of the best examples of how to make trash occasionally interesting on its face. It's not as good as Imitation of Life or Magnificent Obsession or All That Heaven Allows. It's still, however, vastly more interesting than a lot of other Hollywood crap, because it's so over the top, and this one is so obviously about Robert Stack being gay, that is has interest. Sirk was always pretty good about getting to the slightly more interesting parts of the inner corruption of the 1950s than most other directors. It's really just a shame that he chose to waste his talents on gussying up crap. But then again, that is the point of his movies: he's subverting the idealized version of the 50s by using obvious soundstages, bright colors, ridiculous score, wind blowing leaves in the house, and rear-projection to continually force the audience to remember that they're watching a movie. That he ruined the melodrama by going so far over the top that no one could out do it in all seriousness is probably the greatest tribute to his enduring legacy on film. But really, the enduring legacy of this film is Dorothy Malone winning an Oscar for masturbating an oil derrick model.