Written on the Wind (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Presented here in an excellent DVD from Criterion, Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind may well have been primarily aimed at cashing in on the huge success of Warners' blockbuster Giant, directed by George Stevens. Both films deal with the doings of Texas millionaires; not so coincidentally, both films star Rock Hudson. But Giant has dated badly, and its epic pretensions seem woefully bloated today. It's forgivable to have made a Classic Comics adaptation of War and Peace as King Vidor did, but far less pardonable to have adapted an Edna Ferber potboiler as it were War and Peace. By contrast, Sirk's lurid melodrama remains a highly entertaining, if at times overwrought vehicle. Certainly Universal-International and Sirk made no bones about catering to the audience's fantasies in depicting the lifestyles of the rich and famous. But in a country where the difference between movie audiences and the rich and famous has often been only one of money, Written on the Wind by no means lacks a basis in reality. The movie's action effectively dramatizes the daydreams many people would act out if they suddenly had the wealth of the Hadley family in this film.Based on a novel by Robert Wilder, Written on the Wind reprises a plot motif that had appeared before in Vincente Minelli's Undercurrent and Max Ophul's Caught, recounting the fate of a young woman who unwarily marries an unbalanced wealthy man probably modeled upon Howard Hughes. Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), an alcoholic playboy given to sleeping with a pistol under his pillow, is the heir to an oil fortune who weds Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) and takes her back to the family homestead with the intent of continuing the Hadley dynasty. But apparent sterility frustrates his hopes, and when Lucy becomes pregnant, he accuses her of having an affair with his best friend, Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), a suspicion encouraged by Kyle's venomous, scheming sister, Marylee (Dorothy Malone), who spends her spare time sleeping with the town studs.Freudian family sagas were quite in vogue in 1956, both in stage productions like Tennessee William's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and in films such as Elia Kazan's adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden. Kyle is recognizably a tortured soul in the vein of James Dean's Cal in East of Eden, but the screenplay lacks what a follower of New Criticism would have called an objective correlative. Written on the Wind offers little plausible explanation for its hero's self-destructive behavior. While Kyle's father reproaches himself for having failed to live up to his paternal responsibilities, he hardly seems to have done anything to justify the curse that has descended on his household.Less naïve contemporary viewers-a fortiori viewers today--might well have suspected other problems lurking behind the false front of Kyle's sterility: both an incestuous attraction to his sister and an unacknowledged homosexual attachment to the more virile and successful Mitch. But nothing of that kind could have gotten past the PCA. When Richard Brooks made his execrable version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he replaced Brick's longing for his dead buddy, the cause of his estrangement from his wife, with straightforward-and sexually straight-adultery between Maggie and Skipper. So Written on the Wind falls back on the stock clichés of the genre, making its enfants terribles into a pair of spoiled rich kids. Nonetheless, Sirk gets away with an outrageously symbolic shot when the film ends with Marylee caressing a phallic-looking replica of an oil well as her substitute for the hunky Mitch, who has eluded her grasp.Where Brooks changed a serious play into despicable schlock, Sirk was able to inject some class into this febrile soap opera, although with rather odd results. The director's fundamental commitment to aestheticism, a constant of his career, enabled him to treat such an unpromising subject with a remarkable degree of artistic objectivity. In the words of Andrew Sarris, "The essence of Sirkian cinema is the confrontation of all material, however fanciful and improbable." However, Sirks's calculated tastefulness in composing shots, which leaves no detail to chance, clashes with the almost stupefying tastelessness of settings that resemble garish color ads for home interiors or fancy resorts, and unfold before the spectator's eyes a veritable saturnalia of fetishism-commodity and otherwise.Looking at Written on the Wind almost fifty years later offers something of the voyeuristic pleasure of studying life in the dreary Eisenhower years through a telephoto lens-just as did the protagonist of Hitchcock's Rear Window. At the same time, Russell Metty's color cinematography so strongly accentuates the flamboyant mise en scene that after a while the film begins to take on an oneiric quality-upper middle-class culture as a collective hallucination. But Written on the Wind is no 1960s acid trip like Easy Rider or Performance, and Sirk inscribes his signature indelibly on every image in the film. It is no small tribute to the director's formidable skill as a stylist that in the opening shots he brilliantly establishes the tone of the entire movie that is to follow in what might seem a marginal flourish: the dead leaves that swirl around Kyle and even follow him into the family mansion when he arrives for the confrontation with Mitch and Marylee that will culminate in his death. No harbinger of spring these, the leaves thematically conjoin the mortality of the character, the mortality of an artistic style, and the mortality of the studio system itself in a single breathtaking gesture. At one point, Kyle offers a toast to "The truth, which is anything but beautiful." What better epigraph could Sirk have chosen for this movie!

Very good, glossy Douglas Sirk 1956 romantic melodrama. Rock Hudson plays an oil industry engineer who works for a magnate who partially raised him alongside his son and daughter. The son is played by Robert Stack as an over-indulged rich boy who has never worked a day in his life, with money coming out of his ears and has a deep affection for booze. Dorothy Malone plays the daughter, another over-indulged spoiled brat with money to burn and a penchant for sleeping around with anything in pants and an unfulfilled yen for Hudson. He sees her as a former sister, and now as a skank for who he still has brotherly affection. Lauren Bacall plays the secretary who falls in love with Stack and marries him, but is loved by Hudson. She realizes her mistake but is willing to fulfill her obligation to Stack. Stack's biggest problem, among many, is that he has a low sperm count and may never father a child, which he feels he needs to do so as to please his father and outman Hudson. The best moments are when Malone mambos up a storm at any given moment. When she mambos with Hudson, WOW, what a moment. Hudson dances like he has a broom taped to his back. Malone even mad mambos while her poor put-upon dad falls down the stairs and dies. Watch this torrid soap opera. The Criterion Collection DVD is excellent quality with a few extras. Very entertaining and highly recommended.

Douglas Sirk, the director of Written On the Wind, was the master of melodrama (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession) and this may well be his masterpiece. Based on a novel by Robert Wilder, which in turn was based on the sensational marriage of the R.J. Reynolds heir and torch singer Libby Holman, and his subsequent murder, the picture is set in a small Texas town dominated by the Hadleys who own the oil thereabouts.This incredibly disfunctional family consists of the greiving widower father, his alcoholic son and nymphomaniacal daughter, a more or less adopted good guy whose father gave him over to the Hadley's so he would have a better start in life, and the new bride of Hadley's son, a clever advertising woman from New York.The resulting stew of misunderstandings, illicit lust, impotence, misplaced desire, murder and generational conflict is played out in the most gorgeous, theatrical technicolor ever seen. I've always thought that Written on the Wind was the first of a new category that could be called "film noir et coleur". The lighting, color and cinematography create an atmosphere that makes the lurid melodrama not only work, but assume the stature of classic tragedy.Hudson and Bacall are very good, but Stack and Malone are breathtaking in their audacity and unmitigated glee in bringing these over-the-top characters to life. Sample from one of the unforgettable scenes between the brother and sister: Brother: "Wasn't that Lucy and Mitch? Where were they going"? Sister: "I don't know. Where would you take your best friend's wife"?The movie has something to say about family relationships, American futility, the need to escape, and the artificiality of our culture. Luckily, it makes its point in a unique, campy, overblown way that is simultaneously comforting and unnerving. You can laugh with this movie, but you can't laugh AT it. I'm eagerly awaiting the Criterion DVD!

Admittedly, ‘Written on the Wind’ is not my favourite of Douglas Sirk’s late 1950’s melodramas but it has more than enough to enjoy within it.The Hadley family has everything: astounding Texas oil wealth, influence and power. But when Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) marries family son Kyle (Robert Stack) despite an attraction to his best friend Mitch (Rock Hudson) who in turn has always been loved by Kyle’s sister Marylee (an Oscar winning Dorothy Malone), it sets in motion a chain a of events which will leave few undamaged.Although it has many of the same hallmarks as Sirk’s other films, and it’s possibly the most highly regarded of the Sirk melodrama’s generally, I tend to find myself that ‘Written on the Wind’ somehow comes across as more like pure soap opera whereas Sirk’s earlier pictures such as ‘Magnificent Obsession’ and ‘All That Heaven Allows’ had their melodrama, but also possessed a moral perspective as well. ‘Wind’ is much more outrageously salacious and glossy in comparison but lacks that element, as it’s more about the decay, rot and unhappiness lying underneath the surfaces of the characters and their lives. But it’s enormously enjoyable of course!The film looks wonderful on Blu-ray and while extras package is not numerous what is present has some quality nonetheless. Inside the case is a fold-out sheet with poster art on one side and an interesting essay on the reverse, plus the trailer, an archival documentary on director Douglas Sirk and a more recent film scholar interview about the film which all in run to around 45 minutes of material.

The pleasure of this Criterion Blu Ray is the video quality. You're looking at a moving Vogue- or Life magazine in 56's style color. Of course, Lauren Bacall works in color as fine as in black and white in the Big Sleep. Yes, entertaining, not boring, no top story but beautiful heritage from Douglas Sirk.

Watch this on a cold and rainy evening in autumn or winter after a nice warming meal and be transported back to Hollywood when it was still great.I must say I do love the old movies but it such a change from the bad language and sex in your face in some of the movies of today. Apart from thislike a lot of the movies of these times they would draw you into the story gradually and you do get drawn in to the story .even if at times can be a little over the top ..But remember it is a movie and it does entertain. What more can I say ?

Excellent service. Item as advised.The cinematography is gorgeous and inspired. The story is a classic. Lauren Bacall however is not really my cup of tea

Onési