Magnificent Obsession
Emotion Pictures: International Melodrama
December 13, 2017 - January 7, 2018
Command of color and composition transforms Douglas Sirk’s most outré melodrama—about a devil-may-care playboy (Rock Hudson) seeking redemption after he blinds a widow (Jane Wyman)—into a luminous, metaphysical exploration of fate and spirituality. Preceded by Matthias Müller’s Home Stories.
Everything came together—the advent of widescreen filmmaking, a star-making performance from Rock Hudson, and a story so far-fetched it was practically begging for Sirk’s Brechtian approach—in the first of the director’s extraordinary Technicolor melodramas. Hudson is a devil-may-care playboy who inadvertently widows and then blinds the local doctor’s wife (Jane Wyman), before giving up his reckless ways to become a surgeon in hopes that he might cure her. Through his command of color, composition, and mise-en-scène, Sirk transforms this most outré of premises into a luminous, metaphysical exploration of fate and spirituality.
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