Stars: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith

Director: Douglas Sirk

Summary: Mitch and Kyle are childhood friends, and while Kyle's sister Marylee hopes to marry Mitch, the two friends in fact fall in love with Lucy. It is Kyle, however, who wins her hand in marriage, but later finds out that he is sterile. When Lucy falls pregnant, Marylee suggests to Kyle that Mitch is the father...

Douglas Sirk whips up a devastating maelstrom of melodrama in WRITTEN ON THE WIND, the explosive tale of the Hadleys, a wealthy Texas oil family whose debauched members are on a crash course for self-destruction. From the windswept drunken car ride and pistol shot opening the film, Sirk leads an artful backward glance at the misjudgements, cruelty and bad faith that led the Hadleys and their unfortunate hangers-on to the point of no return. Robert Stack is Kyle Hadley, number one black sheep of the Hadley Clan, who attempts to cure his troubled life with a whirlwind marriage to the beautiful and unsuspecting Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall). Marylee Hadley is the rebellious and drunken younger Hadley, perpetually in trouble and eager for diversions from her vacant existence. Rock Hudson as Kyle's virtuous best friend Mitch is the pillar of sanity around which the entire Hadley Clan clings for its survival. However, when meddlesome Marylee, wounded from a spurned infatuation with Mitch, insinuates that Lucy's expected child is actually his, the already fragile and explosive situation devolves into a tragic battle to the death. Virile and visceral performances from an all star cast played against symbolically saturated cinematography and art direction combine to forge an alcohol and tragedy soaked critique of fifties middle class America.

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Douglas Sirk puts the opera back into soap opera in this exquisitely baroque melodrama, the epitome of Technicolor gloss. Rock Hudson (as wonderfully wooden as ever) and Lauren Bacall play stalwart examples of altruism, clean living, and good old American ambition, but Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone steal the film as white trash millionaire siblings stewing in self-pity. The plot reads like an episode of Dallas: Texas oil-baron playboy Stack steals good girl Bacall from best friend Hudson while Stack's sister Malone puts her slinky moves on Hudson, the strapping poor boy made good. Toss in impotence, jealousy, alcoholic binges, emotional blackmail, and backstabbing nastiness, mix vigorously with high style and expressionist flourishes, and you've got the most potent melodrama cocktail of the 1950s. Stack twists his arch delivery into the practiced bravado of a boozing womanizer nursing an inferiority complex while Malone sashays and flirts her way through an Oscar-winning performance as a slutty, sassy good-time girl. It's so over the top that it might seem kitschy at first glance, but former theater director Sirk subtly shades his vision in the shadows of film noir and uses the portentous angles and gaudy color to create a vivid, vivacious world of glossy surfaces and social masks cracking under the pressure of responsibility and the pain of lost love. --Sean Axmaker

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1956
Release Date:	February 21, 2005
Runtime:	95 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	821 993 6
Keywords:	Wind, General, Wide, Screen, Drama, Written
Genre:	Drama