Written on the Wind - Criterion Collection (1956)

Written on the Wind

"Written on the Wind" is gaudy, garish bauble - a perfect piece of escapism. True, Douglas Sirk's films have more to offer than what is just on the surface, as professional film historians would attest. But in terms of pure entertainment, how can you beat Dorothy Malone as the blackmailing sex bomb Marylee Hadley dancing in an orgiastic frenzy while everyone's lives are literally being destroyed around her? Or Robert Stack as boozy, bombastic Kyle Hadley, who keeps a girly gun underneath his pillow at night and can't cope with the knowledge of being seemingly impotent? (Is that pearl inlay on that tiny piece?) Then there's red-socked Mitch Wayne, played by Rock Hudson. Everyone wants Mitch Wayne, including ultimately Kyle's wife, Lucy (played by Lauren Bacall), nympho Marylee, and even subconsciously Kyle himself. This is fun and over-the-top, and it's easy to see why the wonderful Pedro Almodovar is an admirer! August 30, 2008

First-rate melodrama!

Written on the wind inaugurated formally the series of melodrama but told with tinge of tragic essence about an play-boy millionaire addict to alcohol and his nymphomaniac sister, who are potential inheritors of a financial oil-empire, but that unavoidable will drag down and eventually destroy all what it interposes in their road.

Powerful performances of Dorothy Malone (who deservedly won an Oscar as Best supporting actress and a nomination for Robert Stack as best Supporting Actor, who might be well regarded as the best performance in his lifetime in the big screen).

Douglas Sirk is the same director of the cult movie "Imitation of life" (who inspired to REM in the homonymous song) and whose exerted in Fassbinder is more than obvious.
August 21, 2008

written on the wind

I loved this movie, brings back very good memories of when i watched it with my mom. I have looked forever for it. interesting story line, poor rock hudson to fall in love and have his best friend marry her. was interesting all the kids were spoiled rotten, tons of money and the only loyal one was the outsider that got adopted in. July 30, 2008

A Zanily Overwrought Camp Delight!!

"Down there, I'm a guy with too many chips -- throw 'em up in the air and a few land on my shoulders," says tortured playboy Robert Stack, piloting classy secretary Lauren Bacall on a joyride in his private plane. This zanily overwrought classic -- about the mysterious death of the heir to an American dynasty -- had lawyers for the tabacco-rich Reynolds family working overtime. But instead of trying to stop the moviemakers (it's a heavily veiled account of the Reynoldses' son marrying torch singer Libby Holman and then meeting a sudden demise), the clan ought to have sued for a better script: No matter what happened in real life, it can't possibly have been this devinely silly.

"Are you looking for laughs or are you soul-searching?" asks Rock Hudson, Stack's devoted childhood pal, of nice girl Bacall. Actually, as audiences of the mid-'50s already knew, she's out to demonstrate again that she knows how to marry a millionaire. When she and Stack return to the family mansion from their honeymoon, Bacall's alarmed to find a gun stashed under Stack's pillow, perhaps because it's not the only Freudian symbol on hand: they're living in the shadow of the most insistently phallic oil wells in movie history. Hudson's so hot for Bacall that a character quips that Hudson's, er, "torch is burning."

Sizzling out of control, too, is Stack's floozy sister, Dorothy Malone, who ogles Hudson like the slab of prime rib he is, and reveals there's bad blood between her and her brother. "I hate him so," she drawls, "for taking you away from me. I'm desperate for you ... marriage or no marriage." Malone sneaks off from a society blowout in the newlyweds' honor to ask Hudson, "I've changed since we last swam in the raw, haven't I?" When he mutters , "I was an idiot boy then," Malone storms back to the party and achieves Bad Movie immortality by dancing the maddest, most furious mambo EVER.

The madness accelerates when Malone picks up gas station attendant Grant Williams, who tells her tycoon father, Robert Keith, "Your daughter's a tramp, mister." Turned on by all the action, Malone mambos again -- in fron of a framed portrait of Hudson -- as her father drops dead. Then, Malone goads Stack, who's taken to booze when he finds he may not be able to father a child with Bacall, that he'd better keep an eye on Bacall and Hudson. When Stack calls her "a filthy liar," Malone snaps, "I'm filthy -- period!"

It all ends, as of course it must, with gunplay, a courtroom trial, and Malone -- head of the family at last -- crumpled at her father's massive desk fondling a miniature oil derrick. The following year, Malone stood onstage at the Oscar ceremonies similarly fondling her Best Supporting Actress award. Meticulously filmed, utterly sublime, here's the GIANT of Bad Movies So Bad They're Good! September 13, 2007

Written on the Wind

Sirk's stirring melodrama about the meltdown of an oil-baron family is a high-strung potboiler mixing rage, impotence, money, sex, anxiety, and murder in one flaming concoction. Visually sumptuous and redolent with garish colors to match the Hadleys' bursting emotions, "Wind" boasts the fantastic talents of Hudson and Bacall as straight-arrow types in a hellish situation. The chiseled Stack is a mess of masculine anguish as hard-drinking Kyle, and Robert Keith is excellent as the Hadley patriarch, but Oscar winner Dorothy Malone takes the prize for her outlandishly catty, slutty turn as Marylee. "Wind" may not be subtle, but it's a whirlwind of (melo)dramatic delights. June 27, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...