Douglas Sirk’s ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) and MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1954), part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series Emotion Pictures—International Melodramas, will screen on New Year’s Day.
A potent influence on Fassbinder, Wong Kar-wai, Todd Haynes and many others, these masterpieces (along with Sirk’s Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life) are the high-water mark of overwrought Hollywood melodrama.
“Setting arch-American characters and tales in lurid tableaux of riotous colors and tangled shadows, catching the frozen moments of contemplative self-horror of furiously dynamic characters and the stifled energies of reflective ones, Sirk plays ironic variations on American themes.” — Richard Brody*
ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, Monday, January 1, at 7 pm.
filmlinc.org/films/all-that-heaven-allows
MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, Monday, January 1, at 9:15 pm.
filmlinc.org/films/magnificent-obsession
WALTER READE THEATER, 165 West 65th Street, New York City.
Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson in Magnificent Obsession (1954). Image credit: Universal Pictures.
