Come le foglie al vento

I had the pleasure of seeing this lurid chunk of celluloid camp on television last night. It's a candy-bright trash-o-rama about a secretary (Lauren Bacall) who marries into a filthy rich oil family only to find a more general kind of filth under the gloss of privilege and public respectability.

Oddly enough, both Bacall (usually the epitome of strength and gravity) and Rock Hudson are given fairly bland roles, always remaining above the hideously dysfunctional quagmire that surrounds them. They're too "good" to be very interesting. The characters at the opposite end of the spectrum are what keep our attention. Once soaked in alcohol, a pre-Unsolved Mysteries Robert Stack is immensely entertaining as tormented, pistol-waving Kyle, upset over his inability to conceive the children needed to complete the little American Nightmare in rich-people hell.

However, this decidedly cracked soap is dominated by Dorothy Malone as Marylee, the boozed-up, fast-driving slut with the temperament of your average cobra. Malone won a well-deserved Oscar for her astonishing, one-of-a-kind performance--all bulging eyes and twitching lips, like a drag queen in heat, spewing acid at the other members of the cast. From her wild mambo of death (!) to fondling a model oil derrick (!!!), she is a hilarious delight. Aren't the bad girls always more interesting? Other reviews talk about her being "reformed" at the end. I, personally, did not see that. Yeah, she's upset...but with someone like Marylee, how long is that gonna last?

Later parodied by John Waters's Polyester, Written on the Wind is a seamy, steamy don't-miss. In gorgeously saturated Technicolor.

At the Academy Awards ceremony on March 27, 1957, Dorothy Malone won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her torrid, over-the-top portrayal of a spoiled heiress of a Texas oil tycoon in WRITTEN ON THE WIND. The 1956 potboiler, adapted from Robert Wilder's novel , was a veritable three-ring-circus showcasing alcoholism, greed, impotence and nymphomania.

Malone's performance as Marylee Hadley , a lonely rich girl who picks up men to assuage the pain of rejection from a former childhood sweetheart, was representative of the movie as a whole. Mesmerizing to watch even as it resorts to the "lowest -common- denominator" melodrama, WRITTEN ON THE WIND is ultimately the work of one man, the incredibly gifted director Douglas Sirk, an émigré from pre -World War 2 Weimar Germany who left his European theater heritage behind to pursue a career in Hollywood.

An extremely erudite man, Sirk made a name for himself in the 1950's as Universal Studios' reliable director of lavish soap operas, most notably with Ross Hunter's productions of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION , ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS and IMITATION OF LIFE . Independent producer Albert Zugsmith offered Sirk the opportunity to work outside the limiting constraints of Universal's demure entertainments and create a more adult , "sensational" product , hence the sultry WIND and its follow-up, 1957's TARNISHED ANGELS, both released under the Universal International banner. It's anyone's guess why Sirk didn't pursue loftier themes, but apparently directing these exaggerated dramas appealed more to his artistic sensibilities. WRITTEN ON THE WIND could be considered Sirk's epic soap opera ; indeed, it is so rife with human vulnerability and neurosis as depicted among the very rich that it is as compelling to watch as any real life domestic squabble among the rich and famous, perhaps more so. Robert Stack (not an actor typically known for over -emoting) nearly matches Malone in intensity with his offering of the weak- willed brother Kyle Hadley, a mere shadow of his patriarchal father. When he finds out that he is unable to impregnate his new bride ( a beautifully leonine Lauren Bacall ) , Hadley goes off the deep end, escalating an already serious drinking problem with a "secret " gun fetish that threatens to make him a human time bomb. Both brother and sister, as venal and unlikeable as they are, are presented as victims of their past, giving them a human quality that makes them seem less monstrous ( and far more interesting than the 'good" side of the family, mainly Bacall and the impossibly handsome Rock Hudson , young Hadley's old boyhood friend and business associate, a surrogate son to the old man and Malone' s unattainable object of desire. ) Despite all the domestic co-dependency on display , it's not so much the story that is memorable here as the way it is filmed. With a real panache for pictorial composition and editing, director Sirk draws his audience into this picture with the most heightened Technicolor cinematography imaginable : every single shot in this film is an eye-filling canvas of saturated colors, from the sight of a tank-like pink Cadillac pulling up to an enormous mansion's front doors to the garish decor of a luxury Miami hotel , a spectrum of hues almost blinding in their diversity. Action and dramatic scenes feature Sirk's adept use of tilted camera angles , shadowy lighting and cross-cut editing , shown to greatest effect in the scene where a rebellious , drunken Malone dances uninhibitedly in her upstairs bedroom to the loud blaring of a record player while her stricken father precariously ascends the huge staircase ; the scene is so riveting that you swear you are experiencing a great oedipal drama unfold. What you're really watching is trash of an enormously entertaining kind, gussied up in lurid Technicolor and polished to perfection by a visual genius.

It is ironic that during the '50s, when Douglas Sirk was at his most successful in terms of audience appeal, he was virtually ignored by the critics… He is now seen, however, as a director of formidable intellect who achieved his best work in melodrama…

"Written on the Wind" is about the downfall of a Texan oil dynasty surrounded by worthless reputation, alcoholism, and nymphomania… It is about the twisted, fatal connections between sex, power, and money...

Stack draws a compelling portrait of a tormented drunken destroyed by frustration, arrogance, jealousy, insanity, and some deep insecurities…

Dorothy Malone succeeds as an attractive woman with an excessive sexual appetites, degrading herself for Hudson and to other fellows in town… Her best line: "I'm filthy." In one frantic scene, we see her shaking, quivering and sweating to a provocative mambo… In another weeping alone over a model oil-derrick at her father's desk—symbol of excessive wealth and masculine tyranny…

The frenetic atmosphere is both made palatable and intensified by Sirk's magnificent use of colors, lights, and careful use of mirrors

Robert Stack never really got over losing a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Kyle in "Written on the Wind" to Anthony Quinn's 12-minute performance in "Lust for Life." Stack plays the deeply disturbed, alcoholic son of an oil tycoon. He has lived his life in the shadow of the friend with whom he was raised, Mitch, played by Rock Hudson. They both love the same woman, Lucy, (Lauren Bacall), who becomes Kyle's wife. Kyle's sister, Marylee (Dorothy Malone), is a drunken slut who's in love with Mitch. Their story plays out in glorious color under the able direction of Douglas Sirk, who really dominated the melodrama field with some incredible films, including "Imitation of Life," "All that Heaven Allows," "Magnificent Obsession," and many others.

Make no mistake - this is a potboiler, and Stack and Dorothy Malone make the most of their roles, Malone winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. There's one amazing scene, mentioned in other comments, where she wildly dances to loud music as her father collapses and dies on the staircase. We're led to believe that Marylee sleeps with everyone, including the guy that pumps the gas, because she's in love with Mitch. Mitch wants nothing to do with her. He's so in love with Lucy that, out of loyalty to Kyle, he wants to go to work in Iran to avoid temptation. I doubt he'd be so anxious to get there today no matter how much in love he was.

Hudson and Bacall have the less exciting roles here - Hudson's Mitch is the good guy who's been cleaning up Kyle's messes for his entire life, and Bacall is Mitch's wife who finds herself in a nightmare when her husband starts drinking again after a year of sobriety. Sirk focuses on the more volatile supporting players.

In Sirk's hands, "Written on the Wind" is an effective film, and the big scene toward the end in the mansion is particularly exciting. The director had a gift for this type of movie, and though he had many imitators, he never had an equal.

What can you say about "Written on the Wind," other than this is where the

genre of overproduced, inane Hollywood melodramas teeters into the realm of

genuine art. Every aspect of this highly artificial concoction is fully realized, an amazing example of the whole becoming far more than the sum of its parts.

Elements that are, considered separately, laughable (the abundance of

Freudian symbols, the hyperrealistic colors, the over-the-top acting, the gushy soundtrack) all strangely combine into a hypnotically watchable masterpiece. Clearly there's a genuine artist (director Douglas Sirk) at work here -- someone who can take all the usually misused contents of the 1950s Hollywood big

studio toolbox and create an astonishing work of art.