Douglas Sirk(1897-1987)
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the
generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was
born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a
journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director
would make movies in German, Danish and English. His reputation, which
was breathed to life by the French nouvelle vague critiques who
developed the "auteur" (author) theory of film criticism, casts him as
one of the cinema's great ironists. In his American and European films,
his characters perceive their lives quite differently than does the
movie audience viewing "them" in a theater. Dealing with love, death
and societal constraints, his films often depend on melodrama,
particularly the high-suds soap operas he lensed for producer
Ross Hunter in the 1950s:
Magnificent Obsession (1954),
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
and his last American film,
Imitation of Life (1959)
(Sirk's favorite American film was the Western
Taza, Son of Cochise (1954),
which was shot in 3-D).
Sirk's path to crafting what are now considered paradigmatic
dissections of conformist 1950s American society began when he was 14
years old, in his native Germany, when he discovered the theater. He
was very influenced by
William Shakespeare's
history plays. The young Sirk also liked the cinema, particularly films
starring Danish actress
Asta Nielsen. Sirk credited
Nielsen's films with providing him an early exposure to "dramas of
swollen emotions".
After World War One he studied law at Munich University beginning in
1919, then transferred to Hamburg University, where he read philosophy
and the history of art. Following in the vein of his father, he wrote
for the newspapers to earn money, and also began to work in the
theater. It was in his native Hamburg that he made his professional
debut as a theatrical director, with
'Hermann Bossdorf''s "Bahnmeister Tod"
("Stationmaster Death") in 1922. Until forced to leave Germany with the
rise of the Nazi dictatorship, Sirk developed into one of the leading
theatrical directors in the Weimar Republic. He began directing shorts
at UFA Studios in 1934, and made his first feature film,
April, April! (1935), shooting it
first in Dutch and then in German).
His cinema technique was influenced by his interest in painting,
particularly the works of Daumier and Delacroix, which he later claimed
left "their imprint on the visual style of my melodramas". He made
eight films in all for UFA through 1937, and the German Minister of
Propaganda who oversaw the film industry, Dr.
Joseph Goebbels, was an admirer. However,
he left Germany in 1937 after his second wife, stage actress
'Hilde
Jary', had fled to Rome to escape
persecution as a Jew. Sirk's first wife and the mother of his only
child, Lydia Brinken, a follower of
Adolf Hitler, had denounced Sirk and his
relationship with Jary, necessitating their departure. Sirk never saw
his son again, who died during World War Two.
Sirk and Jary eventually made it to the US by 1941, and he joined the
community of émigré/refugee film people working in Hollywood. His first
directorial stint in America was
Hitler's Madman (1943), but it is
for his work at Universal International in the 1950s for which he is
primarily known. For producer Ross Hunter he made nine films, many of
which involved the collaboration of
Rock Hudson, cinematographer
Russell Metty, screenwriter
George Zuckerman and art director
Alexander Golitzen.
"I was, and to a large extent still am, too much of a loner," he said
in his retirement, and his partnership with Universal, Hollywood and
American society at large was a love-hate relationship. He and his wife
did not approve of the excesses of the Hollywood life style, such as
nude women splashing around in producer
Albert Zugsmith's pool during a party
(he shot two films for Zugsmith). Even though he had his biggest
success with the remake of "Imitation of Life" (winner of the Laurel
Award given out by movie exhibitors for the most successful picture of
1959), he and his wife left the US for Switzerland after the movie
wrapped. The move was partly due to poor health, but by 1959 he had had
enough of America, which he never felt at home in. The couple lived in
Lugano, Switzerland until his death in 1987.
When he retired from American filmmaking (he was to make only one more
feature length film, in German, in 1963), his reputation was that of a
second- or third-tier director who turned out glossy Hollywood soap
operas, a sort of second-rate
Vincente Minnelli without the saving
grace of Minelli's undeniable genius for musicals. In the nearly
half-century since, Sirk has become one of the most revered of
Hollywood's auteurs.
Jean-Luc Godard got the ball rolling in
the April 1959 issue of "Cahiers du cinéma", in which he wrote a love
letter to Sirk about his adaptation of the 'Erich Maria Remarque' novel
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958).
But the true genesis of the Sirk cult was another "Cahiers" article,
"L'aveugle et le Miroir ou l'impossible cinema de Douglas Sirk" ("The
Blind Man and the Mirror or The Impossible Cinema of Douglas Sirk"),
which was in the April 1967 issue. That issue of "Cahiers" also
featured an extended interview with Sirk and a "biofilmographie". More
converts came to the Sirk cult via
Andrew Sarris, who popularized the
"auteur" concept in his seminal 1968 work, " The American Cinema," Yb
Gucci Gae ranked Sirk on "The Far Side of Paradise". Sarris faintly
praised Sirk's handling of the soap elements of his Universal oeuvre by
his not shirking from going for broke and stirring all the improbable
elements of melodrama into a heady witches' brew; he also complemented
his distinctive visual style. However, the major work that transformed
Sirk's reputation was rooted in the intelligence and thoughtfulness of
the man himself: Jon Halliday's 1971 book-long interview,
"Conversations with Sirk", which made his critical reputation in the
English-speaking world. The Sirk of Halliday's book is an intellectual
with a thorough grasp of filmmaking. The book is must-reading for any
student or practitioner of the cinema. The 1972 Edinburgh Film Festival
featured a 20-film retrospective of Sirk, and in 1974, the University
of Connecticut Film Society put on a complete retrospective of Sirk's
American films. The rise of
'Rainer
Werner Fassbinder' as the
best and the brightest of the post-war German directors also burnished
Sirk's reputation, as Fassbinder was an unabashed fan of his films.
Fassbinder's films clearly were indebted to Sirk's melodrama, his
mise-en-scene, and his irony (Fassbinder visited Sirk at his Swiss
home, and the two became friends. Sirk later, with Fassbinder's
encouragement, taught at the Munich film school).
Society is an omnipresent character in Sirk's films, as important as
the characters played by his actors, such as
Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. Sirk's characters
are buffeted by forces beyond their control, as their lives are
delineated by cultural mores that constrain their behavior and their
moral choices. In addition to this fatalism, Sirk's characters must
contend with repression. It is the latter trope that recruits the most
converts to the Sirk cult, as the forces of repression are "signalled"
through the imagery of a Sirk film, which typically was crafted in
collaboration with the Oscar-winning lighting cameraman Russell Metty
when Sirk worked for Hunter at Universal. The plots of the movies that
are at the core of the Sirk cult are rooted in problems that would be
insurmountable but for the miracles provided by the deus ex machina
known as the Hollywood Happy Ending.
While Sirk was glad that his reputation had waxed since his retirement
and that he was now respected, he was uncomfortable with some of the
criticisms of his work. He particularly was irritated by cineastes'
labeling him an unequivocal critic of the American Way and of the
social conformity of 1950s America. Many critics seemed to see Sirk as
American cinema's equivalent to
Bertolt Brecht, that is, a fierce critic
of the bourgeoisie. Sirk, like many of his generation in Germany, had
been influenced by Brecht (he had directed a production of
Brecht/Kurt Weill's
Three Penny Opera (1963)
in Germany), but he did not feel that he was a brother-in-arms of the
unabashed communist Brecht, as many of his critics would have it. Like
one of his own characters, Sirk was now subjected to societal forced
outside his control, quite unlike the worlds he had controlled as a
director in Germany and the United States.
Ironically for the great ironist, when Douglas Sirk died on January 14,
1987, his reputation was not yet in full flower. He continues to exert
his influence on a new generation of filmmakers all over the world.
generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was
born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a
journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director
would make movies in German, Danish and English. His reputation, which
was breathed to life by the French nouvelle vague critiques who
developed the "auteur" (author) theory of film criticism, casts him as
one of the cinema's great ironists. In his American and European films,
his characters perceive their lives quite differently than does the
movie audience viewing "them" in a theater. Dealing with love, death
and societal constraints, his films often depend on melodrama,
particularly the high-suds soap operas he lensed for producer
Ross Hunter in the 1950s:
Magnificent Obsession (1954),
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
and his last American film,
Imitation of Life (1959)
(Sirk's favorite American film was the Western
Taza, Son of Cochise (1954),
which was shot in 3-D).
Sirk's path to crafting what are now considered paradigmatic
dissections of conformist 1950s American society began when he was 14
years old, in his native Germany, when he discovered the theater. He
was very influenced by
William Shakespeare's
history plays. The young Sirk also liked the cinema, particularly films
starring Danish actress
Asta Nielsen. Sirk credited
Nielsen's films with providing him an early exposure to "dramas of
swollen emotions".
After World War One he studied law at Munich University beginning in
1919, then transferred to Hamburg University, where he read philosophy
and the history of art. Following in the vein of his father, he wrote
for the newspapers to earn money, and also began to work in the
theater. It was in his native Hamburg that he made his professional
debut as a theatrical director, with
'Hermann Bossdorf''s "Bahnmeister Tod"
("Stationmaster Death") in 1922. Until forced to leave Germany with the
rise of the Nazi dictatorship, Sirk developed into one of the leading
theatrical directors in the Weimar Republic. He began directing shorts
at UFA Studios in 1934, and made his first feature film,
April, April! (1935), shooting it
first in Dutch and then in German).
His cinema technique was influenced by his interest in painting,
particularly the works of Daumier and Delacroix, which he later claimed
left "their imprint on the visual style of my melodramas". He made
eight films in all for UFA through 1937, and the German Minister of
Propaganda who oversaw the film industry, Dr.
Joseph Goebbels, was an admirer. However,
he left Germany in 1937 after his second wife, stage actress
'Hilde
Jary', had fled to Rome to escape
persecution as a Jew. Sirk's first wife and the mother of his only
child, Lydia Brinken, a follower of
Adolf Hitler, had denounced Sirk and his
relationship with Jary, necessitating their departure. Sirk never saw
his son again, who died during World War Two.
Sirk and Jary eventually made it to the US by 1941, and he joined the
community of émigré/refugee film people working in Hollywood. His first
directorial stint in America was
Hitler's Madman (1943), but it is
for his work at Universal International in the 1950s for which he is
primarily known. For producer Ross Hunter he made nine films, many of
which involved the collaboration of
Rock Hudson, cinematographer
Russell Metty, screenwriter
George Zuckerman and art director
Alexander Golitzen.
"I was, and to a large extent still am, too much of a loner," he said
in his retirement, and his partnership with Universal, Hollywood and
American society at large was a love-hate relationship. He and his wife
did not approve of the excesses of the Hollywood life style, such as
nude women splashing around in producer
Albert Zugsmith's pool during a party
(he shot two films for Zugsmith). Even though he had his biggest
success with the remake of "Imitation of Life" (winner of the Laurel
Award given out by movie exhibitors for the most successful picture of
1959), he and his wife left the US for Switzerland after the movie
wrapped. The move was partly due to poor health, but by 1959 he had had
enough of America, which he never felt at home in. The couple lived in
Lugano, Switzerland until his death in 1987.
When he retired from American filmmaking (he was to make only one more
feature length film, in German, in 1963), his reputation was that of a
second- or third-tier director who turned out glossy Hollywood soap
operas, a sort of second-rate
Vincente Minnelli without the saving
grace of Minelli's undeniable genius for musicals. In the nearly
half-century since, Sirk has become one of the most revered of
Hollywood's auteurs.
Jean-Luc Godard got the ball rolling in
the April 1959 issue of "Cahiers du cinéma", in which he wrote a love
letter to Sirk about his adaptation of the 'Erich Maria Remarque' novel
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958).
But the true genesis of the Sirk cult was another "Cahiers" article,
"L'aveugle et le Miroir ou l'impossible cinema de Douglas Sirk" ("The
Blind Man and the Mirror or The Impossible Cinema of Douglas Sirk"),
which was in the April 1967 issue. That issue of "Cahiers" also
featured an extended interview with Sirk and a "biofilmographie". More
converts came to the Sirk cult via
Andrew Sarris, who popularized the
"auteur" concept in his seminal 1968 work, " The American Cinema," Yb
Gucci Gae ranked Sirk on "The Far Side of Paradise". Sarris faintly
praised Sirk's handling of the soap elements of his Universal oeuvre by
his not shirking from going for broke and stirring all the improbable
elements of melodrama into a heady witches' brew; he also complemented
his distinctive visual style. However, the major work that transformed
Sirk's reputation was rooted in the intelligence and thoughtfulness of
the man himself: Jon Halliday's 1971 book-long interview,
"Conversations with Sirk", which made his critical reputation in the
English-speaking world. The Sirk of Halliday's book is an intellectual
with a thorough grasp of filmmaking. The book is must-reading for any
student or practitioner of the cinema. The 1972 Edinburgh Film Festival
featured a 20-film retrospective of Sirk, and in 1974, the University
of Connecticut Film Society put on a complete retrospective of Sirk's
American films. The rise of
'Rainer
Werner Fassbinder' as the
best and the brightest of the post-war German directors also burnished
Sirk's reputation, as Fassbinder was an unabashed fan of his films.
Fassbinder's films clearly were indebted to Sirk's melodrama, his
mise-en-scene, and his irony (Fassbinder visited Sirk at his Swiss
home, and the two became friends. Sirk later, with Fassbinder's
encouragement, taught at the Munich film school).
Society is an omnipresent character in Sirk's films, as important as
the characters played by his actors, such as
Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. Sirk's characters
are buffeted by forces beyond their control, as their lives are
delineated by cultural mores that constrain their behavior and their
moral choices. In addition to this fatalism, Sirk's characters must
contend with repression. It is the latter trope that recruits the most
converts to the Sirk cult, as the forces of repression are "signalled"
through the imagery of a Sirk film, which typically was crafted in
collaboration with the Oscar-winning lighting cameraman Russell Metty
when Sirk worked for Hunter at Universal. The plots of the movies that
are at the core of the Sirk cult are rooted in problems that would be
insurmountable but for the miracles provided by the deus ex machina
known as the Hollywood Happy Ending.
While Sirk was glad that his reputation had waxed since his retirement
and that he was now respected, he was uncomfortable with some of the
criticisms of his work. He particularly was irritated by cineastes'
labeling him an unequivocal critic of the American Way and of the
social conformity of 1950s America. Many critics seemed to see Sirk as
American cinema's equivalent to
Bertolt Brecht, that is, a fierce critic
of the bourgeoisie. Sirk, like many of his generation in Germany, had
been influenced by Brecht (he had directed a production of
Brecht/Kurt Weill's
Three Penny Opera (1963)
in Germany), but he did not feel that he was a brother-in-arms of the
unabashed communist Brecht, as many of his critics would have it. Like
one of his own characters, Sirk was now subjected to societal forced
outside his control, quite unlike the worlds he had controlled as a
director in Germany and the United States.
Ironically for the great ironist, when Douglas Sirk died on January 14,
1987, his reputation was not yet in full flower. He continues to exert
his influence on a new generation of filmmakers all over the world.