Written on the Wind (1956)

Written on the Wind
Sirk's stirring melodrama about the meltdown of an oil-baron family is a high-strung potboiler mixing rage, impotence, money, sex, anxiety, and murder in one flaming concoction. Visually sumptuous and redolent with garish colors to match the Hadleys' bursting emotions, "Wind" boasts the fantastic talents of Hudson and Bacall as straight-arrow types in a hellish situation. The chiseled Stack is a mess of masculine anguish as hard-drinking Kyle, and Robert Keith is excellent as the Hadley patriarch, but Oscar winner Dorothy Malone takes the prize for her outlandishly catty, slutty turn as Marylee. "Wind" may not be subtle, but it's a whirlwind of (melo)dramatic delights.

Trashy "Classic" of American Cinema is Guilty Pleasure
If you enjoyed the television shows Dallas and Dynasty, this movie is right up your alley.
Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone are poisonous, dysfunctional siblings, in opulent surroundings, who are both spiraling to doom... and aren't above dragging innocent people with them for a ride.

When lives collide...When love is out of reach... When fate deals a bad hand... When leaves blow into your front hallway... When you're driving with the top down and your hairdo doesn't muss... When you marry someone on the first date... When your sister does an embarrassing cha-cha in her nightgown... When you loathe yourself so much that you throw a drink in the mirror...
The answers to these puzzles are written in Hollywood circa 1956.

Everything I Didn't Really Need to Know I Learned From "Written on the Wind":

1. Robert Stack's mumbling is fun to decipher. Did he just say "Let's have a drink", or "My chassis stinks"? Did he say "I'm in love with you" or "I want elephant food"?
I can forgive his fierce, intense glaring (just as scary as Dennis Hopper's was in "Blue Velvet"), which makes me wonder: is this the same calm guy who'd be hosting "Unsolved Mysteries" on TV?
2. The score seems to swell powerfully at times so loudly that I thought my television set and all my windows would shatter. Lauren Bacall gazes out a window wistfully and WHOOOSH, the orchestra plays a deafening crescendo. Rock Hudson runs out of milk for his coffee and HHWWWAAA, strings and brass surge.
3. Main characters don't need to be likeable at all. Robert Stack is a self destructive, self pitying boozehound with no good qualities. Dorothy Malone is a cartoon tramp who seems to be attending night school at the Joan Crawford Academy of Manliness. (And yet Stack was nominated for an Oscar, and Malone actually got one!) Lauren Bacall is deadly dull as the new bride trying to understand her pathetic hubby. Rock Hudson is twice as boring as Bacall. I kept hoping another character would take his pulse to make sure he was alive. "Are you in there, fella?"
4. Weird camera angles and billowing curtains are a nice touch in any mansion.
5. The housekeeper from "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" (Maidie Norman) makes a decent witness at a murder trial.
6. Director Douglas Sirk enjoys mirrors.

This film has been included on many "Best Movies" lists. It's good, but it's far from great. It's garish, trashy melodrama; a guilty pleasure.
If this is your cup of tea, I also recommend "The Best of Everything", another dose of colorful suds. This one's about secretaries and the amazing lives they lead in the big city. See the magnificent 55 year old Joan Crawford ask her newbie, "Where's my coffee?"
Fun, campy stuff.

Trashy "Classic" of American Cinema is Guilty Pleasure
If you enjoyed the television shows Dallas and Dynasty, this movie is right up your alley.
Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone are poisonous, dysfunctional siblings, in opulent surroundings, who are both spiraling to doom... and aren't above dragging innocent people with them for a ride.

When lives collide...When love is out of reach... When fate deals a bad hand... When leaves blow into your front hallway... When you're driving with the top down and your hairdo doesn't muss... When you marry someone on the first date... When your sister does an embarrassing cha-cha in her nightgown... When you loathe yourself so much that you throw a drink in the mirror...
The answers to these puzzles are written in Hollywood circa 1956.

Everything I Didn't Really Need to Know I Learned From "Written on the Wind":

1. Robert Stack's mumbling is fun to decipher. Did he just say "Let's have a drink", or "My chassis stinks"? Did he say "I'm in love with you" or "I want elephant food"?
I can forgive his fierce, intense glaring (just as scary as Dennis Hopper's was in "Blue Velvet"), which makes me wonder: is this the same calm guy who'd be hosting "Unsolved Mysteries" on TV?
2. The score seems to swell powerfully at times so loudly that I thought my television set and all my windows would shatter. Lauren Bacall gazes out a window wistfully and WHOOOSH, the orchestra plays a deafening crescendo. Rock Hudson runs out of milk for his coffee and HHWWWAAA, strings and brass surge.
3. Main characters don't need to be likeable at all. Robert Stack is a self destructive, self pitying boozehound with no good qualities. Dorothy Malone is a cartoon tramp who seems to be attending night school at the Joan Crawford Academy of Manliness. (And yet Stack was nominated for an Oscar, and Malone actually got one!) Lauren Bacall is deadly dull as the new bride trying to understand her pathetic hubby. Rock Hudson is twice as boring as Bacall. I kept hoping another character would take his pulse to make sure he was alive. "Are you in there, fella?"
4. Weird camera angles and billowing curtains are a nice touch in any mansion.
5. The housekeeper from "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" (Maidie Norman) makes a decent witness at a murder trial.
6. Director Douglas Sirk enjoys mirrors.

This film has been included on many "Best Movies" lists. It's good, but it's far from great. It's garish, trashy melodrama; a guilty pleasure.
If this is your cup of tea, I also recommend "The Best of Everything", another dose of colorful suds. This one's about secretaries and the amazing lives they lead in the big city. See the magnificent 55 year old Joan Crawford ask her newbie, "Where's my coffee?"
Fun, campy stuff.