Written on the Wind

One of the most oddly colored (violets,bright yellows and reds) wildly flamboyant films made in the 50's, expatriate German director Douglas Sirk made this as a soap opera with a nasty satiric bite. Although Lauren Bacall and Rock Hudson as staid camp followers of a wealthy Texas family are the "stars", it's the perverse characters played by Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone who make the film such a vivid nightmare of the Eisenhower era of outdoor barbecues and post-war wealth. Malone in particular, playing a nymphomaniac oil heiress who dances wildly while her father dies of a heart attack, breaks the mold of the sexually sequestered decade.

Self-destructive nymphomaniac Marylee (Dorothy Malone) and playboy Kyle (Robert Stack) are the children of Texas oil tycoon Jasper Hadley. The adult heirs are spoiled, and entitled alcoholics. Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) is a geologist in the company and a friend of the family. Kyle and Mitch both fall for New York ad executive Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall). Marylee has a secret crush on Mitch. Kyle has a quick marriage to Lucy. This is a melodramatic soap opera of the highest order. It has more in common with modern day soaps. It's not really my taste but it obviously was somebody's taste. It is high class trash with great actors doing big acting. Bacall is striking as always. Stack and Malone are pushing the melodrama. I'm not as familiar with Hudson but he has a quiet power in his acting. Overall, this is pulpy, soapy, and over the top done in a professional way. It is serious trash.

What can you say about "Written on the Wind," other than this is where the genre of overproduced, inane Hollywood melodramas teeters into the realm of genuine art. Every aspect of this highly artificial concoction is fully realized, an amazing example of the whole becoming far more than the sum of its parts. Elements that are, considered separately, laughable (the abundance of Freudian symbols, the hyperrealistic colors, the over-the-top acting, the gushy soundtrack) all strangely combine into a hypnotically watchable masterpiece. Clearly there's a genuine artist (director Douglas Sirk) at work here -- someone who can take all the usually misused contents of the 1950s Hollywood big studio toolbox and create an astonishing work of art.