Which Douglas Sirk movie is most ludicrous?

Imitation of Life is the silliest. But I never get irked of watching ATHA.

Her kids are quite rude. Horrible little brats!

All of them are magnificent works of art.

Visual masterpieces, absolutely.

never seen any. can't watch from beginning to end

Magnificent Obsession is kind of ludicrous. I think All That Heaven Allows is a masterpiece.

Written of the Wind is gripping and entertaining from beginning to end.

The Tarnished Angels is an underrated one.

*on...

Never heard of any of these

WotW is a good place to start…

TAZA, SON OF COCHISE (54). Rock goes Native. Native-American, that is. Shirtless, "He Led the Apache Nation Against Geronimo's Pillaging Hordes."

And let's not forget his two Zarah Leander films made in Nazi Germany. LA HABANERA (37) is really bonkers.

Imitation. If she had all that money for such a lavish, over the top funeral, she could have had a better life.

And the whole, “I loved Sarah Jane too much” bullshit was annoying. Lady, your daughter was a bitch and a ho.

Magnificent Obsession goes a little heavy into that saccharine Christian territory.

Was Laverne worthy of his love?

The only Sirk movie I like is All I Desire. Mainly because it doesn't seem like a Sirk movie.

R12, that's because Lloyd C. Douglas wrote the book it's based on.

Is Written on the Wind the one with Alan Bates in the hayloft and all the neighborhood kids think he's Jesus?

Think Dorothy Malone, r16.

R16 Yes, that's it. You're absolutely right.

No, I think that was Inherit the Wind, with Hayley Mills as Clarence Darrow.

I'm curious....how did you Sirk-fans on DL feel about "The First Legion"??

“But Miss Laura, you never asked?!!”

I think Bacall was very wooden in WOTW. The best performance is from her hair when it spills all over the pillow in the beginning.

It really annoys me that Annie calls Laura "Miss Laura" throughout the film, even on her death bed. Didn't Laura ever say, "Call me Laura"?

But then if it did happen, Annie probably would have refused. In Since You Went Away, in 1943, Hattie McDaniel, the housekeeper, calls her boss "Mrs. Hilton" and the kids by their first names, without "Miss" anything.

Though many people adore the film and think it's very topical for those days, I find it so old-fashioned, for 1959. Movies like Odds Against Tomorrow or The Defiant Ones were playing in theaters around the same time. Granted some of the movie takes place in the past, but not all of it.

There is so much I love about “All That Heaven Allows” . I love the idealized Connecticut setting (well, could have been New York) even if you can clearly see the California hillsides in the opening camera pan. But they get Fall so right. Raking leaves, lunch outside.

I love Agnes Morehead’s vivid lipstick in her opening shot. I love the indictment of the country club set. I love Wyman’s face in the TV screen and her crying at the window in front of the Christmas tree.

And I love the ending. And the music. It’s Sirk’s masterpiece for me and one of his least campy of the big melodramas.

I admit it's still really moving at certain points.

R23, also interesting that Cassavetes’s “Shadows” came out the year before, also about passing although the siblings are mixed race. Makes “Imitation” look so staid.

I admit, I do like all the men running around on the beach in the beginning of “Imitation of Life” in their not quite shorts/not quite Speedos.

My favorite line is when Lana Turner chastises John Gavin about taking a photo of a fat man with his belly going up and down with a beer can on it. "Well, I'M going up and up, and UP!"

Another thing I like in these Universal movies is how when it's supposed to be snowing, they use thick soap suds. I noticed this in Imitation of life, and also in All That Heaven Allows.

R24 The California hills are only visible, I think, in the full-frame version. Since the movie was intended to be cropped, for the wider screen that was standard after 1954, the Criterion version is shown in that ratio and you really can't see those hills.

R11- You forgot to mention UPPITY.

R28- What about Sarah Jane- Im white, I'm white, I'M WHITE!