Movie of the Week: WRITTEN ON THE WIND (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

Why have mellow drama when you can have melodrama?

There’s something darker sitting at the heart of Written on the Wind than in that of Douglas Sirk’s other 1950s melodramas, which include Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), and my personal favorite Imitation of Life (1959). You can locate all of that darkness in Robert Stack’s eyes. Stack portrays Kyle Hadley, playboy heir of a Texas oil family, and a chronic alcoholic whose brief marriage to New York secretary Lucy (Lauren Bacall) becomes his swift undoing. Kyle’s best friend and employee Mitch (Rock Hudson) was the one who had initially courted Lucy and remains in love with her; meanwhile, Kyle’s promiscuous sister Marylee (Dorothy Malone, who won a Supporting Actress Oscar here) has been in love with Mitch her whole life. In Sirk’s hands, this thicket of love triangles could easily go the route of delirious convolution (see: Magnificent Obsession). But what’s so striking about Written on the Wind is how simply and deliberately it unfolds. We begin at the tragic end, then go back in time to see how we got there — and along the way, Stack positively drowns the screen in whiskey and tears. It’s one of the great portrayals of what boozing can do to a man’s soul, and the havoc it wreaks on the lives of those around him. Elsewhere, Sirk’s trademark touches are abundant: the naughty, rinky-dink theme music that accompanies Malone whenever she’s on screen; the way the moonlight hits Lauren Bacall’s face as she takes a gun out of a drawer; the famously closeted Rock Hudson expertly playing a straight man. Given their obvious mastery and beloved status today, it’s always hard for me to believe how much Sirk’s films were maligned back then.

Streaming on the Criterion Channel; available for rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and other major services.