The Far Side of Paradise

Continuing on the ever going quest of watching the 1000 Greatest Films of They Shoot Pictures. Here's another slice of directors categorized by the late Andrew Sarris. 

All That Heaven Allows

All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)

An upper-class widow falls in love with a much younger, down-to-earth nurseryman, much to the disapproval of her children and criticism of her country club peers.

Melodrama, Technicolor, the 1950’s. Douglas Sirk! The formula is there and couldn’t get better. Remade in 1974 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and in 2002 by Todd Haynes with his masterpiece Far From Heaven, Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows might be one of the most visually striking films that the German born director ever made. It’s a shame that I saw my first Sirk movie only two years ago, being such an enthusiast now. With recurrent lead actor Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman as a widow of the upper-middle-class who falls in love for her gardener who himself lives as a simple man living simply and growing trees. Their biggest problem is the disapproval of their relationship by Cary’s (Wyman) children and her circle of friends of the country club.

Written on the Wind

Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

Alcoholic playboy Kyle Hadley marries the woman secretly loved by his poor but hard-working best friend, who in turn is pursued by Kyle's nymphomaniac sister.

Influencing some of the most respected directors (Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodovar) of the past and today, Douglas Sirk’s Melodrama Written on the Wind is one of the most brilliant masterpieces of the genre. Considered as the cornerstone of the soap opera, the sheer excesses of Sirk’s mise en scène, art direction, and his parentheticals to the actors are at their best in this movie. Having only seen The Magnificent Obsession and A Time to Love and a Time to Die prior to Written on the Wind, I did not knew much what to expect. Well, I had a slight idea but I wasn’t prepared to be impressed and charmed by the eccentric facets of Sirk’s once ridiculed film that regain its esteem into the cinephile circles. When one enters into a Sirk film he should be warned that the bright colors and the exuberant over the top acting won’t be an instant amazement.

Kiss Me Deadly

Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)


Mike Hammer is a tough guy, a self-centered hard ass who’s only listening to himself and working for his own benefit only. In the vein of the great portrayals of Humphrey Bogart and Robert Ryan, the character of Hammer is greater than nature. The Film Noir elements that surrounds him seem out of place and the mystery shouldn’t be unravelled contrary to the classic film approach.

Kiss Me Deadly is the metaphor of the nuclear menace that should have been stopped before the Cold War. Hammer’s quest is unhealthy and even if the bodies are pilling around him and even the many direct warnings didn’t stop him from doing the unthinkable. He works like the mind of a mad scientist who wants to destroy the world for his own fame. The story of Kiss Me Deadly could have been completely out of synch and overly stupid but the effective and capable mise en scène of Robert Aldrich goes a long way.

Robert Aldrich’s debut film is a one of a kind Film Noir with superb visuals, a strong script, and solid performances. The inventive camera angles give the appropriate twist to the story’s twisted plot. German expressionism has always been an influence on Film Noirs but the technique used in Kiss Me Deadly is above anything seen before. Furthermore, it’s interesting to notice that Aldrich’s film became such an appraised classic that the critics of the French New Wave censed as one of the great American films of its time and that directors like Quentin Tarantino reused some elements in his earlier films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction most notably.
One of the most important pattern in the Film Noir is the culture of the mystery. We need the tension from the journey to find the mystery. Just think of Chinatown or The Third Man without a final twist. In this case, the mystery is complete because the audience not only wants to discover the “something big and valuable” Mike Hammer is looking for but we want to know the motivations of the unsympathetic anti-hero that Hammer represents. His methods are unconventional and the viewer wants to find what motivates him to use them.
This cult film amongst cinephiles is a sure shot; I mean which film lover doesn’t like Film Noir? Plus, Aldrich’s oeuvre as underrated as it is should be revisited by many because it deserves better praise than it actually received. At least, Kiss Me Deadly received a great treatment by recently being released by the great folks of the Criterion Collection.

A Time to Love and A Time to Die

A Time to Love and A Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958)

It was the first time in 1958 that an American film presented the Second World War from the German side. Well, it took an immigrated German director, Douglas Sirk to get the nerves to produce and direct a film only fourteen years after the events of the film took place.

It was also the first time that German soldiers were represented as human as the different characters of this film. Without the uniforms it could be any army or any country. This is one of the strenght of the film. We can understand universally the events and the preoccupations of the main characters of A Time to love...

On a permission for three weeks a German soldier of the Russian front returns to his hometown to find his family. His discovers it has been bombed and starts on a quest to find his parents.

Like Douglas Sirk's other films, A Time to Love... falls into melodrama without falling completely into clichés or oversentimental. Every bad event is followed by a good one and every good one is followed by a bad one. The wheel keeps turning like that all along the story of the film.

A Time to Love and A Time to Die has a unique touch and feeling on World War II and it is an excellent and unforgettable film from one of the best director of the 1950's.

A Film Retrospective by Michaël Parent