For our latest pick, we'll delve into the Studio system gold mine and pick out the seminal Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 50s... Scathing critique of America and the dominant form of capitalism that was (in Sirk's view anyway) eating away at the soul of the country, dressed up and disguised as "unintelligent" soap opera...
Written on the Wind! We'll slot this one into Wildcard #3 for now, but that may change
Stellar performances from a truly remarkable cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone all go for home runs and all of them succeed. Dismissed upon its release as being too over-the-top and exaggerated, most critics (and viewers) didn't realize
that was the whole point. By contrasting the plasticized beauty of the world inhabited by the super-rich, elite main characters with their ugly behaviour, Sirk proved to fire a shot across the bow to the consumptive elites of America - and the class system that enabled them - that didn't even register. It wasn't until years later that critics and film historians began to peel back the surface layers of this (and all other) Sirkian melodramas, revealing all the complex techniques of one of the masters of the "golden age".
Brilliant!