Douglas Sirk devotées, take note!!

Tomorrow morning, Thursday 17th November, at 8:00am CST, Turner Classic Movies (USA) will air the great Technicolor "women's picture", ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson.

Lovers of melodrama (like me... and every other gay man across the stratosphere, I think) love this May/December film about a widowed dowager who falls in love with her hunky garden-boy, to the gasps and clucks of her tony society peers.

If fevered dialogue and lurid, Technicolor, ultra-saturated 1950's colors please you, this one's not to be missed.

Though the public probably considers IMITATION OF LIFE to be Sirk's (né Detlef Sierck in Germany) finest picture, I think serious art cognoscenti are most fascinated by ATHA. More recent young gay directors such as Todd Haines (FAR FROM HEAVEN) and Rainer Faßbinder are heavily indebted to him.

Sirk's quirks: using nature/trees as metaphors, using interior props and mirrors as metaphors, unusual "above the crowd" group camera angles, knee-level two-shots, invocation of blatantly artificial climatic indicators (snow or autumn leaves very obviously being shaken by a stage-hand, use of highly saturated lighting-gels in interiors-- his signature being "deep periwinkle blue", thematic questions of social intolerance due to class, age or race).

Critics of the 1950's thought Sirk's work was potboiler rubbish... Now these films play as classics. Go figure.

Well, rasputin, these pictures are HUGELY entertaining. Watch five minutes, and you're hooked 'til the end. How often does that happen, nowadays? I used to love to go to the show . . . now, I sit there fidgeting, wondering what I've spent my money on. Exceptions do exist, but they're uncommon. Part of it is my age, but isn't the rest of it that they just don't make stories and people like this, anymore?? And what about the MUSIC, rasputin?? Anytime a possibility exists that a thought could interrupt the sight process, the MUSIC builds from nowhere. In Madame X, the MUSIC was deafening, and ubiquitious. Lurid, too . . .

Jane Wyman used to fascinate me. As a Greek American, she was 'the outer limits,' of WASP appearance and behavior. JW reminded me of some of my elementary school teachers. Winsome, in a 'bangs and pugged nose,' kind of way. Ever see Lucy Galant? Another, must see . . .

and her role in " Johnny Belinda"

Yes, 'Bellinda' was a triumph for Jane Wyman. She claims to have forgotten to put on her girdle, while dressing for the Oscars. Ms. Wyman didn't remember that detail, until she was on her way up to the stage . . . btw: I THINK she's still alive?? So sad that her daughter Maureen Reagan, died so young.

Love Douglas Sirk flicks here. They are totally cool. Loved "Far from Heaven" with Julianne Moore. She's always so damned good in stuff. She's such a beautiful red head for contemporary films, IMO.

I really liked "Written on the Wind" from Sirk with Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack and Lauren Bacall. That one was great!

Mando:-)

Hi rasutin . . . I taped ATHA this morning . . . caught the final fifteen minutes, onscreen. I had forgotten that JW ends up WITH, RH! For some reason, I remembered Ms. Wyman in front of her television set, watching the snow fall outside the windows. :-O

"watching life's parade" ?


(-:

I watched the movie, rasputin. Wow, I'd forgotten how Jane Wyman got 'mashed,' rather early, during this picture. Remember, Howard? The one who assumed that JW was 'on the prowl?' He really laid one on Miss Wyman, and how! She and RH fell in love, quick, don't you agree? How about when Miss Wyman's son, suggested that his mother 'had found a good set of muscles.' ??? LOLOLOL.

Some quirky twists and turns . . . but alls well that ends well . . . [color=#666666]