This was a weird one, neat though, but I felt that some of the narrative structure was confused, and the film meandered between the poignant and the weak story-plot. Actually, this film doesn’t have any specific outstanding qualities, but still, it isn’t too bad, it’s just good, but not particularly so. It is actually a bit hard to explain, there are a lot of shifting emotions in this film, but it never really worked, truly.
Usually, I bash colour and praise black and white cinematography. But when it comes to Douglas Sirk, I prefer his colour films, because they usually are aesthetically beautiful and the cinematography has some real depth. This film is in black and white, and while the cinematography looks quite good, I do wish this was in colour rather than in black and white, because I know it would have added some great quality to the film. On the story itself, it has a lot of quality and possible depth, but I felt a lot of it was too unexplored. A middle-aged burlesque dance returns to her home town, a little village in the outskirts of America, where she has left her children and husband. Of course, this brings a lot of emotions and her past back to her, and she has to face up to what she escaped from. I was disappointed, because the message of the film seems to be that the small town life is better than the life of the city, which I am a bit opposed to, although the film has its share of criticism on the hypocrisy of these small towns. Of course, it can be read that the film rather says that the most important thing is unity and family, but then again, it is overshadowed and left somewhat open, which I don’t think is the best thing for this film.
The film escapes complexity, which is quite disappointing, but it does remain poignant and is a good case of an early Sirk melodrama. Within this context there is a lot that works in the film, and Sirk manages to get quite a bit of emotions out of the narrative, particularly towards the end of the movie. What I guess I am missing is a bit of that cutting edge such as in All That Heaven Allows, as well as the awesome use of colour that he now is famous for. In many ways, Sirk is very easy to compare to Max Ophüls, much because of their similar background and reasoning for coming to Hollywood. But while Ophüls was a maestro of the moving camera, Douglas Sirk was the master of the colour. Both have wonderful cinematography with depth almost untouchable, but while Ophüls films are absolutely stunning in black and white, this works somewhat against Sirk, and especially in this. You can still tell he is an excellent storyteller from the camerawork that he utilizes here, but it is quite limited and I wish I was rather watching a Sirk film in colour. Still, though, it all works well, and while there seems to be some lacking narrative, the emotions of the characters are well developed and manage to convey exactly what is going on within the characters.
Perhaps not the extravaganza that other Sirk melodrama’s are, this film still works on an emotional level, and one wouldn’t be ill-advised to watch it. However, maybe not the essential Sirk film, and while it was more serious in tone and had more developed themes, I still enjoyed Has Anyone Seen My Gal? quite a bit more.
3 comments:
I agree with everything you said about this movie.
I think this film is fascinating. It generates more questions than it answers. The family unit is restored in the end (which is important for melodrama of the time, to deal with questions of the nuclear family and gender identities and to question mainstream values concerning them) and the re-united couple stands up against small-town gossip.
In this way, the film lays open the contradictoriness of 1950s American society much as other melodramas of the time do, only in a different manner.
The symbolism also works without colour. There is this staircase where people run up and down commenting on their emotions, things falling down and smashing and other.
There is a lot to discover in this film.
I do not agree with everything you say.
First of all about colour. The B&W here reminded me of small provincial towns as shot in The Magnificent Ambersons, Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt or Wyler"s Jezebel. I find the coloured glamour of Sirk at times
distracting : the Vogue or Vanity Fair element it introduces dries my eyes at a moment I am supposed to, or invited to shed tears. Nothing of the like here. This is the story of a woman gone adrift who finally finds sanctuary among people who love her, at a time in her life when she is able to reciprocate.
Post a Comment