Douglas Sirk

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

so I've been consuming forgotten, second-rate Sirks. This George Sanders period vehicle is an odd one (a rare chance to see clean-shaven Akim Tamiroff). I like Carole Landis in it...

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-forgotten-douglas-sirk-s-a-scandal-in-paris-1946

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yHZJ2zJW0w

Seem to recall seeing at Lincoln Center an eternity ago but otherwise have no recollection.

today, Palance as Attila in 'scope

^very dull except for a few flashes by Jack P

To New Shores, his German '37 feature:

https://nseuropa.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/zu-neuen-ufern-1937/

so this schedule is hell on weeknights, but i hope to finish up w/ The First Legion and Summer Storm, at least.

So the best of the little-knowns i caught was last night, DS's second feature Das Mädchen vom Moorhof, analyzed here by KJB:

http://bozelkablog.blogspot.com/2015/12/moor-sirk.html?m=0

Mit Zarah Leander, oder?

Not that one, no. I did see La Habanera with her... strange. A tropicalepidemic / bad-marriage melodrama.

Really bummed that Magnificent Obsession & Written on the Wind haven't been released on blu-ray by Criterion. their All That Heaven Allows restoration is just incredible

Pretty sure WotW has been teased as a forthcoming upgrade.

oh sick, looking forward to it

Then again, I could be wrong. They do a doodle tease every month and I feel like I'm still waiting on some of them years later. For sure, Silence of the Lambs is coming back to the CC fold.

IIRC, Universal is handling the actual restorations on those Works, and once they're done, Criterion will put them out.

that’s great to hear. Saw All That Heaven Allows v recently for the first time and it was just unbelievably beautiful, the most gorgeous & creative lighting I’ve ever seen, and those colors...

the shade of blue on the ATHA Blu-ray cover alone...

for those that have seen the blu-ray: I wasn’t bothered by it, but I did notice dramatic color grading shifts every time there was a cross fade (probably happens 20+ times in the movie)

RIP, Dorothy Malone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJC_EBSDMKk

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/76/fc/74/76fc749dac67584ccf194acdf8d0597c.gif

you hadda go there

goddamn i just watched that movie the other night. rip queen

Good obit in the WaPo that I can’t seem to link to

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dorothy-malone-oscar-winning-actress-known-for-alluring-roles-dies-at-92/2018/01/20/39b347a8-fdf5-11e7-a46b-a3614530bd87_story.html?utm_term=.a5eb33124266

“I came up with a conviction that most of the winners in this business became stars overnight by playing shady dames with sex appeal,” she said in 1967. “And I’ve been unfaithful or drunk or oversexed almost ever since — on the screen, of course.”

Perhaps her finest role came in “Written on the Wind,” a 1956 melodrama set in her home state of Texas and directed by European emigre Douglas Sirk.

“An agent kept calling me that there is a director from Europe who wants you and only you,” Ms. Malone told the Chicago Tribune in 1985, explaining how she got the part. “He was every woman’s dream of a director. He was very Prussian, wore a scarf, and maybe he even had a walking stick. If he liked you, he was so much fun. I found him utterly charming.”

Ms. Malone played an oil baron’s spoiled daughter who wasn’t shy about satisfying her out-of-control desires. Her character, Marylee Hadley, drinks too much, smokes almost constantly, shimmies to mambo music in skintight gowns and tries to seduce various men, including Rock Hudson, who is in love with another woman, played by Lauren Bacall.

In one scene, Ms. Malone drives off with Hudson in a red convertible sports car.

“I’ll have you,” she says, giving him a beckoning, sidelong glance. “Marriage or no marriage.”

When Ms. Malone won her Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1957, presenter Jack Lemmon tried to get her to cut short her speech by putting his wristwatch in front of her.

jeez, watch the spoilers, NY Times

Her final film appearance was as a smiling lesbian ax murderer in “Basic Instinct” (1992).

Probably the wrong thread for this, but ...

https://variety.com/2019/film/news/universal-rock-hudson-biopic-all-that-heaven-allows-1203155807/

change that title

uh

how can you name a biopic of an actor after one of his most enduring films? is there a precedent for this?

Struggled for a bit with just how ridiculous Magnificent Obsession is, but around the time Wyman reveals to Hudson that she's known his true identity pretty much since the beginning it finally clicked with me: the movie is about the allure of fantasy, and how buying in to a romantic illusion is preferable to cynicism. Which makes it just about the perfect material for a Sirk picture.

I gotta rewatch it now that it's been upgraded. Yeah, compared to All That Heaven Allows it felt so frivolous and absurd to me at the time. even Written on the Wind had too much camp in it

Maybe it's not good but I just discovered Douglas Sirk did a "nuns do crime" movie???? pic.twitter.com/eZFvguRbkT

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) July 19, 2020

Whoa. I hope it's better than the other movie he made with Colbert

https://www.criterion.com/films/636-written-on-the-wind

<Dorothy Malone oil derrick gif>

Did Sirk really refer to happy endings as “emergency exits”?

Has anyone watched THUNDER ON THE HILL yet?

It's a convent movie!

Interview video accompanying WRITTEN ON THE WIND on Criterion is worth it. Robert Stack says some interesting stuff. Sirk says he wanted to work with James Dean, had noticed his star quality early on, but the studio passed, and somehow Rock Hudson became his leading man instead.

Sirk says Hudson was a truck driver (which is true) and that he “took him off the truck.”

Dorothy Malone was a big prude in real life!

Which of course makes perfect sense in the end.

Robert Stack RIP

That stinks. He was an interesting guy. Not a great actor, but he worked with and was respected by Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk, etc. In fact Sirk said he was the only lead actor in _Written on the Wind_ and _The Tarnished Angels_ to understand Sirk's ambitions for these films. Apparently during down time on set they would hang around and talk about Eastern philosophy.About 10 years ago my friend spotted him wandering around a L.A. movie theater, wearing an _Unsolved Mysteries_ jacket.

I did hear about Dorothy Malone being a prude somewhere along the way

Zugsmith and Sirk both talk at length about having to convince her to do the famous dance in WotW. Sirk says some very interesting stuff about the dual nature of actors. Malone herself says that the difference between her onscreen persona and her offscreen self made for problems in her personal life, her own version of Rita Hayworth’s observation about how “‘men fall in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me.” (When did she actually say this, if she indeed said it)

She had very pretty eyes, it’s a shame she was a prude. Cindy Wilson of the B-52s has similar eyes.

"Lava" is about that last scene in WOTW.

Holy shit