" Injustamente acusado de ironizar a realidade, Sirk tenta acima de tudo mostrá-la como é, exagerando nos tons mas mantendo a verdade, por muito simples ou novelesca que pareça. No fundo, é uma profunda operação estética, de imagem e conteúdo, muitas vezes nascendo de romances ou filmes secundários, de alguém que teve, como é fácil de notar, algum encantamento pelo lado mais romântico e até dramático da América de então."
Excerto do artigo " As cores do melodrama ", de Pedro Santos, publicado na Revista Op. Nrº 25/Inverno de 2007
Imitation of Life - directed by Douglas Sirk 1959 With Lana Turner, John Gavin, Susan Kohner, Sandra Dee - Susan Kohner was born on November 11, 1936 in Los Angeles, California. Her mother was actress Lupita Tovar, a successful performer from the 1930's and it was only natural that for Susan to gravitate toward acting. Her first role was in To Hell and Back (1955) in 1955. One more film in 1956 and one in 1957 brought her to the attention of producers in the movie industry. Susan made four in 1959. The best of the lot was Imitation of Life (1959), a film starring Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. It was a dual story of Lana portraying a struggling actress and Susan as Sara Jane, struggling with the fact that although she appeared white, her mother was black. Susan's role as a young woman trying to cope in the white world while hiding the fact she was black was enough to win her an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Unfortunately, Susan lost out to Shelley Winters in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). After appearing in Freud (1962) in 1962, Susan left films for good with the exception of appearing in the television program "Temple Houston" (1963) in 1963. She wed John Weitz in 1964 and retired to raise a family.
This glamorized remake of the 1934 film Imitation of Life bears only a passing resemblance to its source, the best-selling novel by Fannie Hurst. Originally, the heroine was a widowed mother who kept the wolf from the door by setting up a successful pancake business with her black housemaid. In the remake, Lana Turner stars as a would-be actress who is raising her daughter on her own. She chances to meet another single mother at the beach: African-American Juanita Moore. Moore goes to work as Turner's housekeeper, bringing her light-skinned daughter along. As Turner's stage career goes into high gear, Moore is saddled with the responsibility of raising both Turner's daughter and her own. Exposed to the advantages of the white world, Moore's grown-up daughter (Susan Kohner) passes for white, causing her mother a great deal of heartache. Meanwhile, Turner's grown daughter (Sandra Dee), neglected by her mother, seeks comfort in the arms of handsome photographer John Gavin. When Moore dies, her daughter realizes how selfish she's been; simultaneously, Turner awakens to the fact that she hasn't been much of a mother for her own daughter, whose romance has gone down the tubes.
Has Anyone Seen My Gal? - Directed by Douglas Sirk - 1952 with Charles Coburn, Lynn Bari, Larry Gates, Piper Laurie, Rock Hudson - Douglas Sirk directed this frothy musical comedy set in the 1920s starring Charles Coburn as Samuel Fulton, an elderly man with a multi-million dollar fortune. With no family of his own to whom he can leave his money, Fulton is pondering what to do with his estate. Years ago, he was in love with a woman named Harriet, whom he asked to marry. She turned him down and married another someone else, but he's still fond of her and considers leaving his millions to her family. However, Fulton decides to first give them a test. Posing as an eccentric and threadbare artist, he rents a room from Harriet (Lynn Bari) and her husband Charles (Larry Gates). He then arranges for an anonymous gift of $100,000 to be presented to them so that he can watch their reactions. Sadly, things don't go well; Harriet browbeats the rest of the family into moving into a mansion and tries to convince her daughter Millicent (Piper Laurie) to break up with her boyfriend, poor but good-hearted soda jerk Dan (Rock Hudson), in favor of a wealthier and more socially prominent man. Songs include "Tiger Rag," "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob-Bob-Bobbin' Along," "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More," and "Gimme a Little Kiss, Will Ya, Huh?" James Dean has a tiny part as a customer at the soda fountain; it was his first appearance onscreen.
All That Heaven Allows directed by Douglas Sirk 1955 with Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey. One of director Douglas Sirk's best and most successful romantic soapers of the 1950s, All That Heaven Allows is predicated on a May-December romance. The difference here is that the woman, attractive widow Cary Scott (Jane Wyman), is considerably older than the man, handsome gardener-landscaper Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson). Sirk builds up sympathy for Cary by showing how empty her life has been since her husband's death, even suggesting that the marriage itself was no picnic. Throwing conventionial behavior to the winds and facing social ostracism, Cary pursues her romance with Ron, who is unjustly perceived as a fortune-hunter by Cary's friends and family--especially her priggish son Ned (William Reynolds). Amusingly, Conrad Nagel was to have had a much larger part as Harvey, an elderly widower who carries a torch for Cary, but his role was trimmed down during previews when audiences disapproved of an implicit romance between a sixtyish man and a fortysomething woman! All That Heaven Allows was remade by unabashed Douglas Sirk admirer Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Ali--Fear Eats the Soul (1974), in which the age gap between hero and heroine was even wider.
Written on the Wind - Directed by Douglas Sirk 1956 with Dorothy Malone, Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack - Perhaps the definitive Douglas Sirk production, Written on the Wind is based on the novel by Robert Wilder. The story revolves around the Hadleys, a wealthy but thoroughly debauched family of Texas oil millionaires. Robert Stack is self-destructive alcoholic Kyle Hadley, while Dorothy Malone won an Oscar for her equally vivid potrayal of Kyle's nymphomaniac sister Marylee. Kyle manages to win beautiful, level-headed advertising executive Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) away from his best friend, virile Hadley Oil geologist Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), but Lucy soon comes to regret her decision to marry into the hell-on-earth Hadley family. When Lucy becomes pregnant, Kyle assumes that Mitch is the father, leading to a maelstrom of fever-pitch emotionalism and stark tragedy. Before he quite knows what is happening, Mitch is on trial for murder; the one person who can clear him is the craven Marylee, who demands Mitch's sexual favors as the price for her testimony.
The Tarnished Angels - Directed by Douglas Sirk 1957 with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton - William Faulkner's novel Pylon was optioned by Universal producer Albert Zugsmith, who used it as the source for his 1957 production The Tarnished Angels. Robert Stack is a disillusioned World War One ace eking out a living as a barnstorming pilot/parachutist during the early 1930s. New Orleans newspaperman Rock Hudson runs across Stack at a two-bit carnival. He becomes fascinated with Stack's fall from grace, and latches onto him. As he is drawn into Stack's iconoclastic, individualistic lifestyle, Hudson finds he is also drawn to the pilot's long-suffering wife, Dorothy Malone. Jack Carson is on hand as Stack's chief mechanic, whose anger over the pilot's abusive treatment of Malone explodes into tragedy.
" Muitas vezes, meu caro senhor, as aparências iludem, e quanto a pronunciar uma sentença sobre uma pessoa, o melhor é deixar que seja ela o seu próprio juiz. "
Robert Walser
