SYNOPSIS

Mitch Wayne is a simple country boy who has more or less been adopted into the wealthy, troubled Hadley family, Texas oil barons. He is the constant companion and caretaker of the alcoholic, irresponsible Kyle, an object of lust for Kyle's sister Marylee, and the one their father, Jasper Hadley, most often turns to and favors above either of his own children. When Mitch falls in love with Lucy Moore, a woman he meets in New York, he is crushed when she is easily swept off her feet and into a marriage with Kyle. Being a highly moral fellow, Mitch buries his feelings and tries to respect a marriage that at first appearances seems to be working better than anyone expected. Under Lucy's influence, Kyle gives up drinking and stops sleeping with a pistol under his pillow. But when he discovers he may have a medical problem preventing him and Lucy from having children, his life begins to unravel. The situation is not helped by Marylee, whose jealousy of Lucy and frustration over Mitch's repeated rejection of her advances, lead her to poison Kyle's mind against his wife and best friend. When Kyle's father is driven to a heart attack by Marylee's wild behavior, Kyle becomes further unhinged, leading to tragedy and a scandalous public trial that exposes the family's dark secrets.

irector: Douglas Sirk
Producer: Albert Zugsmith
Screenplay: George Zuckerman, based on the novel by Robert Wilder
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Editing: Russell F. Schoengarth
Art Direction: Robert Clatworthy, Alexander Golitzen
Music: Frank Skinner, title song by Victor Young, lyrics by Sammy Cahn
Cast: Rock Hudson (Mitch Wayne), Lauren Bacall (Lucy Moore Hadley), Robert Stack (Kyle Hadley), Dorothy Malone (Marylee Hadley), Robert Keith (Jasper Hadley).
C-99m.

Why WRITTEN ON THE WIND is Essential

When it was released at the end of 1956, Written on the Wind became director Douglas Sirk's most successful picture. While popular with audiences, this lush, over-the-top melodrama suffered the same critical fate as all his work in that genre. Generally dismissed as a stylish purveyor of big budget trash, no one would have suspected at that time that one day Sirk's films would be considered essential viewing. From his early discovery by the critics and the future filmmakers of Cahiers du Cinema (particularly Jean-Luc Godard), to his rediscovery by the pioneers of feminist and psychoanalytic film theory, to the obvious and often-stated impact he has had on such directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes, to the admiration he engenders in contemporary film artists, Sirk is a creator of unique and visually baroque movies.

Many postmodern theorists and those responsible for the resurrection of Sirk's reputation in the 1970s see in Written on the Wind a brilliant example of how, through the visual codes and mise en scene, Sirk subverts the intentions of the melodramatic form, suggesting a bitter irony behind the apparently "happy" endings in which the destructive elements are tamed or destroyed and order seems to be restored. Other critics reject this type of analysis as an attempt to force meaning on a visual artist whose style is the meaning. You may also choose to take the word of the artist himself: "It was a piece of social criticism, of the rich and the spoiled and of the American family, really. And since the plot allowed for violence, it allowed for power of presentation also....A condition of life is being portrayed and, in many respects, anticipated, which is not unlike today's decaying and crumbling American society....Written on the Wind is the ultimate degeneracy of the system. The kaput superstructure...."

The film's style is excessive in every way, from the garish lighting to the blaring music. The whole film is a flashback, and by showing the viewer Stack's violent death at the beginning, we are assured that any happiness that Stack's character may find is only temporary. According to Sirk: "Almost throughout the picture I used deep focus lenses which have the effect of giving a harshness to the objects and a kind of enameled, hard surface to the colors. I wanted to bring out the inner violence, the energy of the characters which is all inside them and can't break through." Stack and Malone's characters dream of going "back to the river," but even this bit of nostalgia seems pathetic because there is no escaping the true source of their sickness. As Sirk himself noted, "they can't go back, they can't return." And so they set themselves on a course of self-destruction.

While Hudson and Bacall would seem to portray the more balanced and happy alternative to the Hadley sickness, they are, in fact, quite unsympathetic. And purposely so. According to Sirk, Hudson's character "is a negative figure. He is not really a man who has a helpful feeling toward these two degenerate kids, Stack and Malone....The Hudson and Bacall characters are rather coldish people and not very interesting." Sirk does a brilliant but counterintuitive thing here: he casts his big box-office stars - Bacall and Hudson - in the least interesting roles and lets Stack and Malone steal the movie. In fact, Stack recalls that when he read the script, he knew at once that Kyle was the "best part in the picture, a part that could hardly fail to earn the actor an Academy Award nomination." To Stack's surprise, Hudson gladly accepted the lesser role: "He never said a word, not a peep. He let the part go completely. He was in a position of power, and didn't misuse it." In the end, Stack was right and he got the nomination (though Anthony Quinn won for his performance in Lust for Life, 1956).

Sexual frustration is a theme in many of Sirk's films, but nowhere is this theme so ubiquitous as in Written on the Wind. Sex is the central problem for all the characters, and Sirk goes to almost excessive pains to mock their troubles. When Stack learns from his doctor (Edward Platt) that he may be sterile, he hobbles like a wounded man out of the drugstore only to be confronted by a boy happily bouncing up and down on a mechanical pony. From Stack's perspective, the boy's physical vitality is like a knife in the heart. (Realism is clearly shunted aside here as it is doubtful a doctor would tell the town's most prominent citizen about his low sperm count at a drugstore luncheonette.) And the phallic oil wells seen pumping everywhere in the background seem to represent a kind of sexual energy that both comments on and mocks the characters' own sexuality.

Malone (who won an Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress) is the epitome of sexuality in the film. But like her brother's impotence, her sexuality is diseased. This is best seen in her sexualized dance that Sirk intercuts with her father's fatal fall down the stairs. Malone does all but jump Hudson, but he isn't interested in her as anything but a sister. His disinterest spurred German director Rainer W. Fassbinder to comment that Hudson's character is "the most pig-headed bastard in the world. How can he not possibly feel some of the longing Dorothy Malone has for him?"

Written on the Wind was the sixth of the eight pictures that Sirk made with Hudson, and though Hudson is, as always, portrayed as the unproblematic American male, contemporary viewers might chuckle at his response when asked why he doesn't just find a girl and get married: "I have trouble enough just finding oil." Hudson, Stack and Malone worked so well together that Sirk reunited them one year later for The Tarnished Angels (1958).

by Rob Nixon & Mark Frankel