Douglas Sirk

They threw me out of geology school for having rocks in my head.

Or maybe it's: He got straight As in Geology. I got thrown out of school for having rocks in my head.

Summer Storm out on DVD now. Quality a bit soft but waaaay better than my ancient copy taped off Canadian TV. Minor Sirk but it stars the incomparable Hugo Haas.

is written in the wind the one where he's got the wild child sister who fucks shit up 4 every1?

anyone read this book on the making of Imitation of Life? (published last year, now in p'back)

no. link?

http://us.macmillan.com/borntobehurt

imitation of life was my bubby's favourite movie.

Is bubby British for servant?

s1ocki made his grandma tie his shoes?

between this and the a serious man thread i think ilx needs a serious jewish re-education

Douglas Sirk was Jewish?

Read some of that book. Lots of interesting background info but much of the time it seemed to be more about the guy who wrote the book than the movie itself and it started to get on my nerves.

Don't start reading those 33 1/3 monographs is my advice.

Haha. I liked the one by Franklin Bruno about Armed Forces but I know what you are saying.

Mouthbreather Jeff Wells "takes down" Sirk, Glenn Kenny responds, etc.

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2010/02/respectful_sirk.php

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/02/anatomy-of-a-reputation.html

This needs to be repeated:

I happen to think that a lot of the critical response to Sirk takes the "subversive" angle too far. I don't think, for example, that there's anything particularly "coded" about Imitation of Life; it's a completely sincere statement on race in America that works within the conventions of a Ross Hunter/Fanny Hurst melodrama.

holy shit those comments.

wait--is jeff wells the numbnuts who didn't "get" sunrise?

if so, then probably best to let him fester in peace

I have a Film degree and on an intellectual level I understand the depth and value, and I know if there's one thing that gives serious film theorists a boner, it's films that "comment upon and criticique the socioeconomic times of their making!" It's the central thesis of serious Film Study, but I've always found it a rather arbitrary one that merely provides a vaguely Marxist intellectual justification for... a bunch of lazy motherfuckers getting a degree for sitting around watching movies for four years.

But again... I can't IMAGINE any of the bros I grew up with or any of our dads, uncles, sporto brothers sitting around watching IMITATION OF LIFE or WRITTEN ON THE WIND.

"Hey, son, you gonna watch the Browns game tonight?" (clicks open beer)

"No, Dad, I rented this DOUGLAS SIRK MELODRAMA that takes a jaundiced view of the patriarchal authority, racism and sexual repression inherent in Eisenhower-era suburbia!"

SMACK. Christ. Just trying to picture running THAT one by my Korean war vet uncles or linebacker brothers or awesome old man and not catching a Robert Loggia-on-youthful Zach Mayonnaise Thai brothel BEATDOWN for being such a pussy.

Not saying this to BE bullying or homophobic or overly macho, but come on.... Even in your thirties, forties, you guys can REALLY sit around watching some gay-camp soap opera from 1954 and not feel like a TOTAL douchebag? Don't you picture like Lee Marvin or Charles Bronson or your own dad peering in on you thinking, "Christ, what a walking vag."

...

i think the most pussy move in life is being terrified of shit that doesn't appear masculine

Results 1 - 10 of about 535,000 for robert loggia on youthful zach mayonnaise

Kehr on the new 4-film TCM box, including The Tarnished Angels:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/movies/homevideo/17kehr.html

just watched written on the wind again the other day

really need to see tarnished angels

more on this set:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/10/12/douglas-sirk-filmmaker-collection/

Must...have this.

i'm not quite as dismissive of sirk as i was a decade ago ... but sorry, i still prefer the original imitation of life to the sirk version.

Douglas Sirk was Jewish?

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:20 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

no, but his wife was.

there's always tomorrow is probably my favorite these days. it's devastating!

But his first wife wasn't
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2005/feature-articles/sirk-2/

In 1929 in Germany he had divorced his first wife and married a Jew, a fact which the first wife used after Hitler won power to get a court order barring Sirk from contact with their son, then eight, whom she was turning into a Nazi and the top child star in German cinema: Claus Detlef Sierck. Sirk was able to see his son only in movies, sometimes as a Hitler Youth. And when he fled Germany, Sirk had to leave his son behind. Toward the end of the war Claus was drafted, sent to the Russian front, and reported missing in action. After the war Sirk came back to Germany, and searched in vain for traces of the son he had left behind. He asked interviewers not to publish these events during his lifetime.

yeah, that supposedly inspired "a time to love and a time to die"

on All I Desire

http://cinephilepapers.blogspot.in/2012/11/douglas-sirks-all-i-desire.html

Glenn Kenny contemplates Faulkner, Sirk, The Tarnished Angels.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2013/06/faulkner-and-sirk-pylon-and-the-tarnished-angels-melodrama-and-art.html

Juanita Moore, dead at 99.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2014/01/01/juanita-moore-oscar-nominated-actress-dead-at-99/4281241/

She requested a private ceremony.

http://s.mcstatic.com/thumb/7922043/21353248/4/flash_player/0/1/imitation_of_life_1959_funeral_scene.jpg

http://lordheath.com/web_images/oliver_hardy___they_go_boom_.jpg

bio post on Moore from the Siren:

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.de/2014/01/in-memoriam-juanita-moore-1914-2014.html

Robrt Stack's (most) subtle performance (ever?) really makes Tarnished Angels work.

Rock's drunk monologue is really not all bad, given the purple prose and impossible plot twisting it requires.

Agree about Stack but that Hudson monologue reminds me of Madonna's British accent.

more like Kurt Cobain's (B+)

Taza, Son of Cochise(Rock as an Apache) screens tonight in 35mm in NYC, but if you're not so lucky a decent print is on YT (and it was released about 5 years ago on a TCM 4xDVD pack).

year-end NY retro includes many rare screenings, including four from the '30s

http://www.filmlinc.org/press/fslc-announces-imitations-of-life-the-films-of-douglas-sirk-december-23-january-6/

And I was thinking of going to the UK, dammit.

I have to say of the stuff in the NY retro i've hardly even heard of before, i'm prioritizing The First Legion for the pairing of Charles Boyer and William Demarest. As Catholic priests!

http://ferdyonfilms.com/Legion%201.jpg

http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/2010/the-first-legion-1951/575/

I believe the geezer seated next to Bill is HB Warner.

It's on YT, if you gotta.

has All I Desire played yett?

series hasn't started, but i've seen that one

how is it? I like what Sirk said about her:

Unfortunately I couldn't give her any great parts in those days. I did see All I Desire again. And you know there is nothing, NOTHING the least bit phony about her ever. Because she isn't capable of it. That insignificant little part she did with me and she played it all right out of herself. And yet she is so discreet -- she gets every point, every nuance without hitting on anything too heavily. And there is such a tragic stillness about her at the same time. She never steps out of it and she never puts it on, this deep melancholy in her presence...

...But that was a rare thing. She impressed me all the time as someone -- what can I say? -- someone who had really been touched by life in some way. Because she had depth as a person. I wish I could have done a really great picture with her...

(decidedly NOT available on YT)

solid, fine Stanwyck

Universal sells a DVD

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/dvd-of-the-week-all-i-desire

http://shop.tcm.com/all-i-desire-dvd/detail.php?p=889101