Douglas Sirk

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my problem with the TV zing is that it's of a piece w. loadsa hollywood films from the 50s-60s, when television took away 1/3 of the cinema audience. it's sour grapes -- but also, it's like 'oh, and going to the cinema is *so* much better', like movie obsessives have their emotional lives all worked out.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:06 (twenty years ago)

But it works today because TV clearly has destroyed the human spirit.

Yeah, Written, Tarnished Angels and Imitation are my favorites ... There's also a restrained (for him) b&w should-we-adulterate suburban soaper, There's Always Tomorrow, that reunites everyone's favorite killers Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:13 (twenty years ago)

But it works today because TV clearly has destroyed the human spirit.

riiiiiight.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:14 (twenty years ago)

i watched this a few weeks ago, and i had a total paradigm shift wrt Ms Sirk. I thot for the longest time that i loved him for the proper theoritcal reasons (ie the visuals--in this movie, the deer, the windows, the scene w. the xmas tree, the television, the architechtual differences b/w hudsons and wymans place) but then i stopped thinking...

this movie gives me hope in an american bohemia, it makes me happy that wyman saved herself from the suburbs, it makes me glad that rock hudson's charachter gor fucked, the tidy and neat ending literally gives me this tight, warm, optomistic, hope in the middle of my belly.

― anthony, Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:17 (twenty years ago)

jesus, the visualisation of 'american bohemia' in this film -- it's about as convincing as 'forty days and forty nights'' depiction of loft-dwelling graphic designers (or whatever they were, you know what i mean).

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:39 (twenty years ago)

or more to the point the depiction of french intellectuals in 'funny face'.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:40 (twenty years ago)

Sirkworld only needs to be 'convincing' on its own terms, just like no frontier bars were as gigantic as the ones in Leone westerns.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:42 (twenty years ago)

http://www.adena.com/adena/mo/ccjail.jpg

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:43 (twenty years ago)

enrique, you enrage me more than any other smart person on ILX.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 5 January 2006 17:26 (twenty years ago)

As in these complaints only make sense if you don't think Sirk has a sense of humor, which he clearly does.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Thursday, 5 January 2006 17:29 (twenty years ago)

>There's also a restrained (for him) b&w should-we-adulterate suburban soaper, There's Always Tomorrow, that reunites everyone's favorite killers Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.

that film is incredible, in fact for sheer camp that's the one that ranks with Written on the Wind. the 'happy ending' is particularly brutal, it didn't feel restrained at all. extra bonus: Fred's wife is played by Joan Bennett, who later played Madame Blanc the director of the ballet school in Suspiria and it is a trip to see her playing a matronly housewife

― milton parker (Jon L), Thursday, 5 January 2006 18:24 (twenty years ago)

Any reviews of Lured?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 5 January 2006 18:33 (twenty years ago)

like movie obsessives have their emotional lives all worked out

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahaha ughhhhhhhhh. < /krusty the klown>

― miss michael learned (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 5 January 2006 18:39 (twenty years ago)

anthony you should read tag gallagher on douglas sirk

e.g. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/36/sirk.html

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Thursday, 5 January 2006 18:44 (twenty years ago)

thanks so much for this A...and i apologize for being an asshole earlier in the thread, rewatching sirk i realised that all of the intellctual shit was a snow job for the feelings...

maybe b/c im smart enough to realise how unrealistic the "bohemian life" is and how desperatley i want it all to work out.

― anthony, Thursday, 5 January 2006 21:14 (twenty years ago)

anthony does this mean you'll change your mind about capra?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 5 January 2006 22:35 (twenty years ago)

That Gallagher article was great until he started talking about the two films I haven't seen.

Enrique got a good anti-Cinemania zinger in there but basically Eric OTM.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Thursday, 5 January 2006 22:50 (twenty years ago)

capra doesnt do it for me, its a compltetely legit question, and i cant do it, and i dont kow why

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:23 (twenty years ago)

tell you what, give me three capras, and i will watch them in the next month

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:28 (twenty years ago)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen, people!

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:33 (twenty years ago)

meet john doe, mr smith, and wonderful life are the three best, but i suspect you've seen at least two of those already.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:36 (twenty years ago)

i wont give you a wonderful life, i just wont. i need to watch mr smith again, and havent seen joe doe

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:42 (twenty years ago)

No one's told me if Lured is any good.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:48 (twenty years ago)

lost horizon is good too!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 6 January 2006 00:50 (twenty years ago)

The Bitter Tea of General Yen, people!

yes yes and yes

there are many others: it happened one night, miracle woman

No one's told me if Lured is any good.

i don't know, but i'm going to watch in a few weeks, so i'll tell you

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 6 January 2006 08:49 (twenty years ago)

i'm trolling a bit, sirk's ok, you know. but there's a good reason to troll: literally more than any other filmmaker, sirk's present-day rep obtains almost exclusively among people steeped in critical theory, and his 'discovery' in the early '70s came out of the milieu in which french theory, brecht, etc coalesced into what's now mainstream hackademic film culture. i kind of wonder what people get out of his films.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Friday, 6 January 2006 12:02 (twenty years ago)

My Mum likes them and she's no French academic

― CLassic or Dadaismus? (Dada), Friday, 6 January 2006 12:11 (twenty years ago)

Lady for a Day trumps Meet John Doe and even Mr. Smith. Anytime Capra explicitly engages politics it's just too phoney-baloney.

Sirk is really disturbing... his best films like fever dreams of soap operas. Just because post-contemporary theorists made his arty rep doesn't mean they don't properly explain what made them successful.

Using Cinemania as representative of cineastes is like using Being There to knock, I dunno, anyone who watches TV.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, 6 January 2006 14:27 (twenty years ago)

OK. Fair enough. Plus, as the Tag G. article sort of indicates, there's a little bit of cake-and-eat-it-too w.r.t his critical standing ("he's great with or without Brecht")...

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Friday, 6 January 2006 16:12 (twenty years ago)

The Miracle Woman is marvelous...then again, when wasn't early Barbra Stanwyck marvelous?

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, 6 January 2006 16:23 (twenty years ago)

literally more than any other filmmaker, sirk's present-day rep obtains almost exclusively among people steeped in critical theory, and his 'discovery' in the early '70s came out of the milieu in which french theory, brecht, etc coalesced into what's now mainstream hackademic film culture. i kind of wonder what people get out of his films.

(1) his films have a life beyond his reputation. imitation of life and others still favorites for many, many people. many get played on tcm quite often.

(2) plenty of filmmakers' reputations are much more exclusive to hackademia. whatever that means to you.

(3) you haven't really said anything about sirk. all of those things you write could be true and many of sirk's films could still be awesome.

(4) [sticks tongue out]

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Friday, 6 January 2006 17:23 (twenty years ago)

plenty of filmmakers' reputations are much more exclusive to hackademia. whatever that means to you.

possibly, but none i can think of. some filmmakers have a rep which is pretty much *sustained* in this way, but my point is 'douglas sirk' is a *creation* of hackademia. as a young hackademic, it means all too much to me.

you haven't really said anything about sirk. all of those things you write could be true and many of sirk's films could still be awesome.

that's true -- i think his films are okay, but awesome, not so much.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Monday, 9 January 2006 09:39 (twenty years ago)

enrique aren't there any classical hollywood directors you don't think are overrated rubbish? i've seen you rip on welles, hawks, ford, now sirk (tho i don't like him much either) - i mean, are you just a real big george stevens fan or something?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 9 January 2006 09:59 (twenty years ago)

i like sternberg, some anthony mann, some nick ray, some welles (honest!), some lang, some hitchcock, some fuller... i'm not really an auteurist, though -- i'm not interested in mann's 'strategic air command' or ray's 'flying leathernecks'. if a film is bad, i don't see the point in trying to dust for the director's fingerprints in order to show the cohesion of his work. maybe that battle needed fighting *in the fifties*, but it feels very distant, now.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Monday, 9 January 2006 10:09 (twenty years ago)

i don't think i'm an auteurist in that sense either, and the original '50s auteurs did inflate the reputations of quite a few of those guys beyond reason. if you actually tried to sit through every john ford film you'd probably find that for every "searchers" there's 5 films on the order of "the horse soldiers" or something. i do think the best of their stuff deserves its rep, though.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 9 January 2006 10:53 (twenty years ago)

yeah. it shouldn't really be a thing, though. the reason i bang on about h/academia is that it institutionalizes sets of cinephile preferences so that it becomes 'contrarian' not to like sirk or whoever. turn the tables and imagine pop music had become a big academic subject, and not film -- it would be like the rockists had won. "what do you mean you 'don't like led zeppelin'?"

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Monday, 9 January 2006 10:57 (twenty years ago)

So from what I can gather, your critical approach is a two-guitar attack: when your not sniping at people from the pseudo-Jamesonian heights of an occupied ivory tower, you barrage them with some anti-rockist snowballs.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Monday, 9 January 2006 12:02 (twenty years ago)

hahahaha, very good. i don't know what 'jamesonian' means tho'.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Monday, 9 January 2006 12:05 (twenty years ago)

if you actually tried to sit through every john ford film you'd probably find that for every "searchers" there's 5 films on the order of "the horse soldiers" or something.

Hmmm, never saw The Horse Soldiers, but get the point, and I've seen enough Fords to think that the ratio is way off. He made 15 features in the '50s: I've seen nine of them, 3 or 4 of which are great, a couple more really good and even the least are nice entertainments like Mogambo or The Last Hurrah.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, 9 January 2006 14:29 (twenty years ago)

I admit that with Sirk (like with most of the pre-'70s auteurs), I've only seen mostly the touchstone works, so maybe my take will change a bit once I've seen No Room for the Groom or Hitler's Madmen.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Monday, 9 January 2006 18:08 (twenty years ago)

My personal Sirk experience is along the lines described in the article Amateurist linked: was told long ago by a film TA to "ignore the story, but pay attention to the camera angles." Spent a while being appalled/fascinated by the various players acting either woodenly or over-the-top. Finally realized that, like the romantic leads in Marx Brothers movies, the stiff, bland redd herring characters who at first blush seem to be the protagonists are distractions from the really interesting tortured souls that initially seemed supporting cast. Read Sirk on Sirk and at first thought his references to Greek Tragedy were incredibly pretentious but then bought into it, realized we were watching the characters struggling helplessly to escape the fates imposed on them by teh Gods/Society/teh director- Fassbinder with a human face. So I made my pilgrim's progress from being the naive, cackling-at-the-screen kind of Film-Forum-goer, to being the sophisticated, silent, tear-holding-back kind. Most moving moment: when Sarah Jane tries to hide under her desk when her mother shows up at school with the snowboots.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 05:29 (twenty years ago)

eight months pass...

was told long ago by a film TA to "ignore the story, but pay attention to the camera angles."

That's so awful!

I wish TCM (or any channel) would show some of the non-"touchstone" movies sometime. My Sirk wishlist on the TiVo never brings up anything new. Looks like "There's Always Tomorrow" was never even on VHS? :(

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Sunday, 24 September 2006 17:53 (nineteen years ago)

was told long ago by a film TA to "ignore the story, but pay attention to the camera angles."

so it doesn't matter what the camera is actually pointing at?

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 24 September 2006 22:42 (nineteen years ago)

was told long ago by a film TA to "ignore the story, but pay attention to the camera angles."

That's so awful!
I got over it.

i believe "taza, son of cochise" with rock hudson is coming out on dvd.

He was still exploring the acting territory he staked out in Winchester 73?

― Run Ruud Run (Ken L), Sunday, 24 September 2006 22:45 (nineteen years ago)

Lured is first-rate. It stars Lucille Ball and Cedric Hardwicke. It's got almost nothing in common with his other films: a realistic film noir with subversive touches.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Sunday, 24 September 2006 22:46 (nineteen years ago)

well, in that movie he plays a warlike brave, and in "taza" he plays a peacelike one.

xpost

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 24 September 2006 22:47 (nineteen years ago)

the paper i wrote to get into the film studies program at my school (about imitation of life) was taught by the woman who i suspect amateurist was ragging about earlier in this thread (the SUNY stony brook cultural studies harpy). imagine being forced to listen to her for four hours a week for fourteen weeks.

― joseph (joseph), Monday, 25 September 2006 03:20 (nineteen years ago)

"the paper... was taught by..."

not sure what you mean.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 September 2006 06:14 (nineteen years ago)

er, i wrote a paper for a class taught by this professor, and i eventually used that paper for my cinema studies application. i was a bit drunkenly incoherent earlier, sorry.

― joseph (joseph), Monday, 25 September 2006 06:23 (nineteen years ago)

five months pass...

the greatest essay on a filmmaker by a filmmaker would be Fassbinder's (I forget the title at the moment) six quick summaries of Sirk films.

This is on the All That Heaven Allows Criterion I watched last weekend! Didn't read it all. Loved that he wrote "unlike me, he loves people."

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 21 March 2007 16:50 (nineteen years ago)

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