Written on the Wind (1956)
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Mitch Wayne is a geologist working for the Hadleys, an oil-rich Texas family. While the patriarch, Jasper, works hard to establish the family business, his irresponsible son, Kyle, is an alcoholic playboy, and his daughter, Marylee, is the town tramp. Mitch harbors a secret love for Kyle's unsatisfied wife, Lucy -- a fact that leaves him exposed when the jealous Marylee accuses him of murder.
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What critics compared Written on the Wind to
Cinematographer Vanja Cernjul ( Violet & Daisy ) shoots things with a colorful eye for detail, things achieving an almost Technicolor-like splendor that reminded me of Douglas Sirk classics like Written on the Wind and Magnificent Obsession.
And with All About My Mother, he has made the near equivalent to Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956), a weepie movie with a brainy sensibility, an open heart, and a wicked sense of humor.
Call them trash, exploitation, or B-movies, Kim's films been compared to the work of Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind) and Nicholas Ray (Rebel without a Cause), both filmmakers who tried to introduce dark elements into standard soap opera plots.
Wachowski paints in broad, colorful strokes, showcasing the types of big emotional motifs that would fit right at home inside a 1950s Douglas Sirk melodrama like Written on the Wind or All That Heaven Allows .
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This melodramatic yet nihilistic thriller unfolds in two distinct yet connected locations and mindsets, like a collision between Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind and David Lynch’s Lost Highway.
Además de imitar el estilo visual de Douglas Sirk (espacios opulentos, vestuarios suntuosos y una paleta de colores saturados) como en All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) o Imitation of Life (1959), Haynes pretendía recurrir a gesticulaciones y ademanes de mayor estilización para expresar la desilusión y desesperanza de sus personajes sumidos en un mundo que visualmente luce brillante y perfecto.
Seconds was seen as a significant acting departure for Hudson, whose career in the late 1960s was on a downward slide after successfully working in several of Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas (including All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind) and a number of romantic comedies with Doris Day in the late ’50s and early ’60s (the most famous being Pillow Talk).
Among the actors appearing in The Greatest Story Ever Told are Charlton Heston (playing Moses, I mean Ben-Hur, I mean John the Baptist), Telly Savalas (of Kojak fame, who first shaved his head for this role and never looked back) as Pontius Pilate, Roddy McDowell (the Planet of the Apes franchise) as the Apostle Matthew, Dorothy McGuire (Written on the Wind) as Mary, Mother of Jesus, Jose Ferrer (Oscar winner for Cyrano de Bergerac) as Herod Antipas, Martin Landau (Mission Impossible, Space: 1999, Ed Wood) as Caiphas, Victor Buono as Sorak (ok, I looked that one up, but Buono was one of my favorite guest villains on the Adam West Batman TV-series; that's right, Victor Buono was King Tut), David McCallum (Man from U.N.C.L.E.) as Judas Iscariot, Claude Rains The Invisible Man, Casablanca) as Herod the Great, Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H) as Thaddeus, John Wayne (The Searchers, Rio Bravo) as a Roman centurion (yes, you read that correctly), and get this, Donald Pleasance (Halloween, Escape From New York) as Satan (and m…