Douglas Sirk as Auteur (Lecture)

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Douglas Sirk is a director who managed to work in the studio system but still put his own personal stamp on his films.


Contents

Chronology of Sirk's Career

  • A. 1900-1987
  • B. Began career in Germany
    • 1. In the theater
      • a. 1922-
      • b. Production of Twelfth Night (1934)
        • i. Led to hiring by Ufa
        • ii. Year after Hitler came to power
    • 2. Film career
      • a. Began with shorts
      • b. Feature-length films: 1935
        • i. Worked in melodrama
          • I. "chamber play films" = from the German Kammerspielfilm
            • A. Small casts
            • B. Intimate stories
          • II. Established Zarah Leander's career
            • A. Was known as a "woman's director" for all the work he did with female stars
  • C. Fled Germany in December 1937
  • D. First US period
    • 1. 1942: Hired by Columbia
      • a. Hitler's Madman (released in 1943)
        • i. Not well-received, bought by MGM and then rereleased
    • 2. Not very distinctive films
      • a. E.g., Slightly French (1948)
      • b. Left US after Shockproof (1949), which was the end of his Columbia contract
  • E. 1945: WWII ended
  • F. 1949-50: Returned to Germany
  • G. Second US period
    • 1. 1950: The First Legion (released in 1951)
    • 2. Hired by Universal
      • a. Mostly produced by Ross Hunter
      • b. Mostly shot by Russell Metty
    • 3. Final film: Imitation of Life (1959)
      • a. Returned to Europe
        • i. To Switzerland

Sirk's critical reputation

  • A. Dismissed during the 1950s by US critics
    • 1. Simple director of weepies
    • 2. Cluttered visual style
  • B. Rediscovered by auteurist critics
    • 1. Late 1950s and '60s
    • 2. Concentrated on his visual style
      • a. Central to the meaning of the films
        • i. Ex: There's Always Tomorrow (1956) featuring Fred MacMurray (who was also in Double Indemnity, The Absent-Minded Professor, and Son of Flubber) - who appears trapped by the toy factory
          • I. Character trapped in middle-class life
  • C. Similar to other '50s melodrama directors
    • 1. E.g., Nicholas Ray, Otto Preminger, Vincente Minnelli
  • D. Freud used to analyze '50s melodrama
    • 1. Manifest dream content = The part you remember when you wake up, the real/actual part
      • a. Conscious level expressed through actual film narrative
    • 2. Latent dream content = Hidden/repressed desires that one often cannot know until it filters to the manifest dream content... (i.e., the conflict with middle class style in There's Always Tomorrow)
      • a. ...Through
        • i. Displacement = moves/transfers desire onto something safer (ex: desire to murder father but in dream murder police officer)
        • ii. Condensation = bringing everything together into one thing (manifest)
      • b. Hidden drives and desires of '50s society (show through visual style = displaced/condensed way to show/display)

Characteristics of Sirk's 1950s work

  • A. Manifest, overt validation of middle-class values
    • 1. E.g., remakes like Imitation of Life
    • 2. Subverted through visual style
      • a. Mise-en-scene
        • i. Iconography of middle-class home
          • I. Ex. All That Heaven Allows (1956) - older, upper class woman dating younger, lower class man: home seen as oppressive and claustrophobic
        • ii. Mirrors and reflective surfaces
        • iii. Windows
          • I. Often trapping characters within
        • iv. Lighting
          • I. Somestimes expressionist
    • B. Ex.: Written on the Wind - dysfunctional family with a troublesome daughter, love triangle, and ominous staircase

External Links

Sirk Filmography

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