#96: SIRK, Douglas: Written On The Wind (1956)
SIRK, Douglas (United States)
Commentary
Written On The Wind [1956]
Spine #96
DVD
DVD
Bathed in lurid Technicolor, melodrama maestro Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind is the stylishly debauched tale of a Texas oil magnate brought down by the excesses of his spoiled offspring. Features an all-star quartet that includes Robert Stack as a pistol-packin' alcoholic playboy; Lauren Bacall as his long-suffering wife; Rock Hudson as his earthy best friend; and Dorothy Malone (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance) as his nymphomaniac sister.
99 minutes
Color
Color
Monaural
1:77:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2001
Director/Writers
Based on the novel by Robert Wilder.
Screenplay by George Zuckerman.
Douglas Sirk was 59 when he directed Written on the Wind.
Other Sirk films in the Collection:
#457: Magnificent Obsession (1954)
#95: All That Heaven Allows (1955)
The Film
Other Sirk films in the Collection:
#457: Magnificent Obsession (1954)
#95: All That Heaven Allows (1955)
The Film
The cars:
Kyle's
Marylee's (Woodill Wildfire)
Cinematic style.
It’s all there in the opening sequence:
- We see the headlights of a yellow sports car (a 1953 Allard J2X) racing down a highway — oil derricks on both sides. The camera follows the speeding car / cut
- New POV / the car races past the camera / cut
- New POV / camera holds on the iconic “H” on an oil storage tank / cut
- New POV / tall building with a flashing H symbol above Hadley Oil Co. / cut
- New POV / the camera is placed behind the blowing leaves of a tree and follows the car as it makes a turn, tires squealing / cut
- New POV / centering a sign “Hadley/Population 24,684; the camera pans gently to the left to follow the car / cut
- CU of Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) in the car, opening a bottle of booze; taking a swig — oil derricks in the background (process shot) / cut
- New POV / car pulls into a driveway … credit sequence; the title song (Sammy Cahn/Victor Young, sung by The Four Aces) begins …
**
The Wilder novel was inspired by the life and death of Zachary Smith Reynolds, who died from a gunshot wound to the head. His wife — torch singer, Libby Holman — was suspected; Reynolds’ death was initially ruled a suicide, then a murder. Holman was never charged, and ended her own life by suicide in 1971.
Zuckerman’s screenplay carefully skirted the real-life details in order to avoid a lawsuit from the Reynolds estate, shifting the setting from North Carolina to Texas, and oil instead of tobacco.
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Six-page wraparound featuring an essay by Laura Mulvey.
60
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Six-page wraparound featuring an essay by Laura Mulvey.
“Douglas Sirk … is a director with multiple critical and artistic legacies. From Cahiers’ early enthusiasm (from Godard particularly), to the acknowledged influence on Fassbinder, to rediscovery by feminist and psychoanalysis theorists of the 1970s, and finally as a favorite of the new generation of American directors (Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes, and others), Sirk has been as important for film practitioners as he has been for film academics. For he is both a supreme stylist of the cinema, and one whose mise en scène is always in touch with his characters, carrying in image the emotion they fail to articulate in so many words. As he says of the penultimate shot in Written on the Wind: ‘Malone has lost everything. And I have put a sign there indicating this — Malone, alone, sitting there hugging that goddamned oil well, having nothing. The oil well which is, I think, a rather frightening symbol of American society.’”
Commentary
None.
The Melodrama Archive
The Melodrama Archive
An annotated filmography of director Sirk with hundreds of behind-the-scenes and production photos, plus vintage lobby cards.
Original theatrical trailers
Original theatrical trailers
For Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows (1955) {Spine #95}
Extras Rating (0-40):
Extras Rating (0-40):
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