Admirable film.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

What I got from my history of film class about the melodrama is that it is centered on drama within the family, and it is drama with "music" as a key element. I am not sure whether this music part is literal or figurative, because I've been told Breaking Bad is a melodrama yet is not that musical. I always thought melodrama just referred to exaggerated drama found in most soap operas.Getting back to this specific movie, "Written on the Wind" deals with a wealthy family and a close friend of that family, none of which I even care for. The family in question is the Hadley family, which contains a drunken impulsive baby of a man, his father who runs the family company, and his sister, the town slut. The most interesting moment of the film is when the Hadley slut is dancing in her room and in a seductive dress, which is connected to her father falling down the stairs to his death. He does not see the dance, but it is implied that her sexuality is what ultimately kills him. Other than this we have a complicated love triangle - actually, make that a quadrangle - which ends up getting the Hadley drunk killed, and if the late Hadley's sister decides to testify that Mitch was the one to kill her brother, nobody can refute it. In a somewhat satisfying ending, she cries as she cannot put Mitch away, and then what do you know, the movie ends. I can see the film's effort, but the style of melodrama bored me to death and seemed hyperbolic.

Presently, a shooting occurs at the Texas mansion owned by the oil-rich Hadley family. In a flashback, we witness what led up to the apparent tragedy… Over a year ago, handsome Hadley geologist Rock Hudson (as Mitch Wayne) meets attractive secretary Lauren Bacall (as Lucy Moore) in New York. He is interested in her, but she is taken by Mr. Hudson's childhood chum, the "Prince Charming" of the Hadley oil empire, Robert Stack (as Kyle Hadley). An alcoholic playboy, Mr. Stack settles down when he meets Ms. Bacall. But family problems and old demons eventually return...One problem is sexually-charged sister Dorothy Malone (as Marylee Hadley). She suffering from unrequited love for Hudson, who only has eyes for Bacall. She doesn't get the man she wants, but Ms. Malone has a active sex life as the town tramp. She moves from bar to bedroom with ease and will even take the guy who pumps her gas to a motel. Service station attendant Grant Williams gets the invite. Hadley patriarch Robert Keith (as Jasper Hadley) is furious. Stack and Malone, the doomed and tormented brother-sister duo, steal the show. They are an indictment of industrialized wealth..."Written on the Wind" won Malone the "Film Daily" and "Academy Award" honor as "Best Supporting Actress" of the year. Stack was nominated by both groups, but it turned out to be Anthony's year (Perkins for the former in "Friendly Persuasion" and Quinn for the latter in "Lust for Life"). Neither director Douglas Sirk nor cinematographer Russell Metty received noms, although both are award-worthy. Moving his players artfully in and around the Hadley mansion, Mr. Sirk is in peak form. And, you can't be bored in a courtroom scene when Malone's hat repeatedly slices the movie screen.********* Written on the Wind (12/12/56) Douglas Sirk ~ Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone

Probably the most hyperactive great movie ever made. Lauren Bacall marries into a wealthy oil family and soon regrets it. Her husband (Robert Stack) is a drunken bully and her sister-in-law (Dorothy Malone) is a nymphomaniac. She's mistreated by both of them. Things go from unpleasant to ridiculous when Stack's best buddy Rock Hudson starts to show some affection for Bacall. Douglas Sirk's resume is littered with high gloss soap operas, most of them absurd, but this one takes the prize. It's fever-pitched, very well acted (particuarly by Stack & Malone) and never dull. Robert Keith is the family patriarch and Grant Williams plays somebody named Biff. Produced by none other than Albert Zugsmith, the undisputed king of lurid 50s epics!

This is one of those overproduced hothouse Douglas Sirk 1950s melodramas Todd Haynes paid homage to in his 2002 "Far From Heaven." The decor and costumes are far more dramatic than the actors, although these particular actors never really stood a chance, as they are mostly horribly miscast (unlike "Far From Heaven.") Rock Hudson plays a dedicated geologist(??) who pines for prim secretary Lauren Bacall(????) in a style indistinguishable from constipation. Bacall is the victim of a whirlwind courtship courtesy of Hudson's friend, oil magnate Robert Stack--she marries him and learns too late that he's a deeply troubled alcoholic (Stack, who should have been playing Hudson's role, goes through numerous vocal and facial contortions meant to demonstrate drunken paranoid jealousy, to little effect.) Stack's sister, Dorothy Malone, has longed for Hudson since childhood; seen by him as a "sister" (it was the 1950s) she seeks refuge in anonymous sexual encounters with barroom trash. (In the previous decade, this would have been Bacall's role). Bacall has no talent for noble suffering; she seems paralyzed. (The great underused actress Ruth Roman was much better at this sort of thing.) Malone is a very peculiar actress; she has severe features (her eyebrows are reminiscent of Joan Crawford) and her elaborate blonde hairdo appears to be made of bronzed Slinkies pasted to her head. Yet she's the only one who really gets into the artificial spirit of this thing--she lets the clothes do the acting for her. I may never forget the shots of her driving a hot-pink convertible while wearing an identically hot-pink pantsuit set off by light pink gloves and scarf--anticipating "Legally Blonde" by fifty years. (Did she buy the car because it matched her outfit?) In the genuinely campy (much-discussed) highlight of the film, the police have just brought her home from yet another motel liaison (Why? She's hardly underage) and her heartbroken father is steeling himself to confront her about it. She goes to her room, strips down to her black (death, evil) slip, tosses on a sheer red (passion) chiffon robe, slaps on a jazz (sin) record, and dances orgiastically around the room. This is intercut with shots of her father mounting the stairs, clutching his heart, and tumbling to his death. Finally, in a totally superfluous eleven-o'clock courtroom scene (which helped win Malone an Oscar), she gets to have a tearful meltdown on the stand while wearing all-black; she concludes the scene by letting her head fall forward, revealing a flat hat that looks like a burnt poached egg. Apart from these highlights (and occasional dialog exchanges like "You're a filthy liar!" "I'm filthy--period!") this is rather tame camp; it never gets as wretchedly excessive as it wants to be.