OK, kids. Fasten your seatbelts! It's going to be a bumpy night with this one!
WRITTEN ON THE WIND, a dazzlingly overwrought, over-acted, over-designed, hyper-Technicolor 1956 soaper from legendary director Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows) is a doozy. Before the credits even roll, you get where THIS movie's going. Speeding drunken driver Robert Stack, drinking corn liquor from a bottle, whizzing by oil wells (the family biz) and into the driveway of a plantation style mansion (yes, with black servants below deck), a weak but worried Lauren Bacall at one window, dypso-nympho Dorothy Malone at another.....then a gun shot! Opening credits roll!
There's a lot of hidden symbolizm going on here. For instance, all characters are color-coded, meaning their costumes. They can go from bright to somber, depending on mood. As Lauren Bacall leans away from drunken Stack and into the arms of Hudson, her togs go from grey-blue to brown. Oh, the change is subtle, and unless you read anything about this movie, it could go unnoticed. Malone's costumes, conversely, are generally BRIGHT pink or black. Her dizzyingly WILD dance to cah-razy jazz music as Rome Burns (so to speak) is outrageous, campy and downright hilarious. Incidentally, she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role. Even the lighting and the deeply saturated Technicolor is highly stylized.
WOW (as it was known in Hollywood circles at the time---and boy, is it), was produced just as the antiquated Hays Code was being broken down, and the film (which predates Peyton Place by a year or so) exploits those subtle changes in the public's taste for the sordid. A must for anyone interested in Hollywood film making.
It's DEVOON.
Read more about Douglas Sirk at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Sirk
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