Written on the Wind

Sirk elevates melodrama to something exciting, with a dazzling sense of style and ability to draw you in. The use of mirrors and reflections is also stunning. Not as compelling as All That Heaven Allows; it doesn't have the same subversive quality, but it's still good. Any scene with Malone sizzles and pops off the screen, and there isn't a bad or pointless scene in the whole movie. Sirk pushes the limits of the Hayes code, but does it with skill & elegance. Emotionally riveting and satisfyin

Only Douglas Sirk could pull off such melodramatic, cliched plot and turn it into an elevated, inspired and stylish film.

Everything about Written on the Wind is big. Big actors (Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall), big characters, big plot, big setting (Texas), big color palette (what better than Technicolor?)...it's such overblown melodrama that in the hands of most it would seem ridiculous, but Sirk makes it work, not so much subverting the material as bashing you over the head with the absurdity of it all. And yet it remains compelling and exciting throughout. The photography is astonishingly beautiful.

Perhaps Sirk's most frankly sexual film, bringing it to the forefront of the narrative through an impotent husband and his nymphomaniac sister. These are boldly drawn characters, and Sirk is unabashed in depicting their nasty and destructive nature. I'm sure this got quite a reaction back in '56. He commands the film with stylish mise-en-scene, showing with lush colors and flamboyant artifice what he cannot say directly.

More groovy soap from Douglas Sirk. The man singlehandedly makes it cool to watch this sort of stuff, even if you're a guy and completely straight :-)

I love my melodrama thick and syrupy, and this had everything I wanted. I want to live in a Douglas Sirk film. Not because of the plot or characters, but because the scenery looks so inviting.

Life is shit and then you die. Nice colours tho

Big, colorful, sexual, unpredictable and goofy as all hell. This is my first Douglas Sirk film and it won't be the last!

Robert Stack is really really creepy!

An outrageous and stylish motion picture. Dorothy Malone's sexiest and most perverse performance.

Douglas Sirk never worked both low melodrama and high tragedy as deftly as he managed to here. This film also boasts the finest cast he would ever work with; Bacall's presence is especially welcome and her chemistry with Rock feels remarkably real (and that is a herculean task). But in many ways Stack is the twisted heart of this entertaining, diverting and moving masterpiece.

nasty, technicolor of flytrap like syrup

This is typical Sirk--heightened soap opera-y melodrama with a cliched plot that manages to somehow work well in his hands. I didn't like it quite as much as Imitation of Life, but it's one of the better Sirks. Dorothy Malone really hams it up delightfully. An enjoyable experience that I was somewhat surprised to like this much.

The plot is a little moronic, but there are some elements that are intriguing. The sets and color are beautiful of course.

I enjoyed this more than All That Heaven Allows. Robert Stack is incredible here - psychotic, menacing and unpredictable, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown, real acting where we see only the character. The melodrama is executed well, but I guess that's what Douglas Sirk's forté is at the end of the day. A lot of fun.

Dorothy Malone was 30 years old when she made this but she looked like she was 40. In fact nearly everybody in this film seems to be old and tired. This whole movie plays out like an arc from Dallas, horrible people doing horrible things to other nasty people. A twisted Soup Opera like melodrama that is strangely watchable due to the direction and actors.

1

Star Rating: ★★★★1/2

Delirious, supreme kitsch. If, as Sirk himself said, there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains the element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art, than i have to say this is pretty damn close to art.

Em honra de Lauren Bacall: Ó céus, Sirk era genial e Dorothy Malone está especialmente esfuziante aqui.

Great acting, stunning atmosphere, excellent scoring... A charming film.

Overwrought but enjoyable.

Another one I want to come back to. Rock Hudson made TWO dramas about Texas oil families in one year, and though I think GIANT is the better film, this is like if GIANT were half as long and twice as intense. Sirk's heightened style is in full display here; though the story is ultimately a little underwhelming, there are some great sequences, a good Oscar-winning performance from Dorothy Malone as a nymphomaniac, and a great nominated performance from Robert Stack as her unhinged brother.

50s melodrama, if acting as a counterpoint to mystery, suspense or comedy, can provide some amusement. however, when it is the entire focus of the film, it's generally a total bore. admittedly it's slickly produced. if i watched the whole thing the score probably would have been lower.

my fourth sirk film and now i know what to look for that pleases me. the bold colors, the long shots, the images in the mirrors. malone definitely stands out with her wonderful performance............

that was a great disappointment. Much about Written on the Wind seems stiff and inspiration, especially his fillers characters, that exists almost all the time to keep fowarding the romance between Hudson and Bacall. Just surreal.

The divide between "who we're supposed to root for" and "who we're actually rooting for" has probably never been clearer. Dorothy Malone really should have been in more things.

This is perhaps the most respectable example of that dauntingly unrespectable tradition - the social melodrama, another quest for love and happiness that only proves the tormenting punishment held in reserve for Americans by insisting on their pursuit of happiness. But it's the casting that is so fabulously intriguing. The real text in the film is the unspeakable attraction between Stack and Hudson, and the relative emotional homelessness of the women.

Classic over the top melodrama. A masterclass in contrasting colour and lighting, dramatic music and revealing mise-en scene. It all looks a bit too much now but still good fun.

watched: 2012, 2022

what a gorgeous looking movie, easy to get lost in. i think dorothy malone gives the best performance. i dont know much about melodrama but it doesn't seem so bad.

#222

Overwrought, trashy melodrama wallowing in technical flair and sensual overkill.

Sirk at his most sweeping and entertaining simultaneously, gorgeous stuff...

This kind of story doesn't really appeal to me but Sirk's mastery of film form is more than evident here. His employment of color, mise-en-scene, and placement of the camera make an indelible impression, even in the midst of occasionally laughable dialogue and Stack's strange and wooden performance.

This is my first Sirk film, and I rather like it. It does move a bit too far into melodrama for my tastes, but the story is compelling and the actors very, very likable. There's a certain horrifying, believable tailspin that I just found myself so engrossed in that I could not look away. The acting itself is not especially good (save Malone's Oscar-winning performance), but I like the film-making, and it's an interesting story. Plus, for once, there's a character named Mitch who's the good guy.

212

Except for a couple of corny mental monologues, this is a perfect Hollywood melodrama.

199

I had to see it for film class. It was ok, but I saw better ones. Sometimes awfully overdramatic.

One of the more astounding of Sirk's technical feats, and you just cannot go wrong with this cast. Loved every second of it until a slightly unconvincing end.

# 216

Classic Douglas Sirk: A magical blend of the ridiculously unrealistic and the deeply genuine. Superbly directed and acted in perfect accordance with "soap opera" acting requirements.

Sarcasm and art are not the same thing.

Score based on distant memory.

Hudson, Stack, and Bacall give a TKO performance, alas, the storyline is pure fluff that you wouldn't dare stuff your pillows with. Derivative in many senses of the word, the film has an engaging first act before it veers off the road in favour for lacklustre character relations and a sentimental overbite that screams of lazy writing.

A good melodrama well directed and well acted, but the story is a little thin and the ending is a little weak. Overall a good movie that never quite makes it to greatness.