Written on the Wind (1956)
Country: US
Technical: col 99m
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Lauren Bacall
Synopsis:
A rich Texan oil family is riven by dipsomania, impotence and sexual jealousy.
Review:
Magnificently overblown, gaudily coloured and surprisingly permissive distillation of what eventually became Dallas on TV, done here with far more style and gloss. The pace is hard, the melodrama high, and Dorothy Malone the hottest thing on two legs. Inevitably the weak and wicked characters (she and Stack) are much more fun than the wholesome good ones (Hudson and Bacall), and we are not fooled for one minute when Malone, having strutted through the film in a succession of provocative red dresses, appears at the end in widow's weeds, distractedly fondling the model of an oil derrick: one of several strokes of mise en scène and innuendo that amount to pure genius.
Country: US
Technical: col 99m
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Lauren Bacall
Synopsis:
A rich Texan oil family is riven by dipsomania, impotence and sexual jealousy.
Review:
Magnificently overblown, gaudily coloured and surprisingly permissive distillation of what eventually became Dallas on TV, done here with far more style and gloss. The pace is hard, the melodrama high, and Dorothy Malone the hottest thing on two legs. Inevitably the weak and wicked characters (she and Stack) are much more fun than the wholesome good ones (Hudson and Bacall), and we are not fooled for one minute when Malone, having strutted through the film in a succession of provocative red dresses, appears at the end in widow's weeds, distractedly fondling the model of an oil derrick: one of several strokes of mise en scène and innuendo that amount to pure genius.
Country: US
Technical: col 99m
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Lauren Bacall
Synopsis:
A rich Texan oil family is riven by dipsomania, impotence and sexual jealousy.
Review:
Magnificently overblown, gaudily coloured and surprisingly permissive distillation of what eventually became Dallas on TV, done here with far more style and gloss. The pace is hard, the melodrama high, and Dorothy Malone the hottest thing on two legs. Inevitably the weak and wicked characters (she and Stack) are much more fun than the wholesome good ones (Hudson and Bacall), and we are not fooled for one minute when Malone, having strutted through the film in a succession of provocative red dresses, appears at the end in widow's weeds, distractedly fondling the model of an oil derrick: one of several strokes of mise en scène and innuendo that amount to pure genius.