Day 94: Written on the Wind (1956)
Douglas Sirk’s “Written on the Wind” is melodrama at it’s finest. It’s rich drunk oil tycoons, sex crazed blondes, even a gun shot ringing out in the dark and all done without a hair getting out of place for any of the characters. While soap operas had been showing the tragic lives of the rich and famous since the days of radio, Sirk’s film brought this drama into a more fully realized world and got away with things no television, or film of that time, would think possible.
In “Written on the Wind,” Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) is the rich playboy son of an oil tycoon, who has been best friends with the middle class Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson) since they were children. Now adults, Mitch works for Kyle’s father while Kyle simply drinks his days away at a local bar and woos pretty girls with his quick car and quicker spending. But, one day, Mitch and Kyle meet Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) and, while Mitch has more honest intentions, it is Kyle who sweeps her off her feet and, eventually, down the wedding aisle.
Never one to double cross a friend, Mitch holds in his desire for Lucy and watches as her and Kyle grow deeper in their marriage and try to conceive a child. As Lucy slips away, Kyle’s sister Marylee (Dorothy Malone), a nymphomaniac firecracker, has her sights directly on Mitch, but he’s having none of it and makes it known when he decides to leave the Hadley oil company to travel overseas- finally sick of the cards life’s dealt him. But before Mitch ever gets a chance to pack his bags, Kyle’s drinking grows worse than ever and Lucy, needing a kind soul to comfort her, turns to Mitch. Now more mixed up in the Hadley’s business than ever, Mitch will have to find a way to right Kyle’s wrongs, even if that means telling Lucy how he feels and ruining the best friendship he’s ever had.
As mentioned before, “Written on the Wind” is a melodramatic masterpiece. With Sirk’s classic use of heightened color and soft edges, he creates a world that is certainly artificial but, through its play-like acting and setting, we gain a heightened realism to the emotions we feel. With subtlety lost in the melodrama, we are allowed to watch our inner most feelings fly on the screen in ways we’d never allow ourselves in real life and, because of this, the film is, at times, almost cathartic.
But this level of honesty doesn’t come without at least acting true to what the characters act and say. In a time where a toilet hadn’t even been seen on the silver screen or television, “Written on the Wind” discusses everything from promiscuous sex, affairs, and even miscarriages, not to mention the randy way Marylee sometimes looks at Mitch, which so steams up the screen you have to wonder if whats on her dirty little mind is even legal today. The general level of frankness the film shows for its time, of course, comes from Hollywood’s own need to beat out the television set, which was beginning to take the edge off the number of theater goers in their seats. Though they were already beating the TV with the use of color, many executives realized that certain adult themes could be allowed in film that would never pass the TV censors and and this could once again bring people back to the big screen for more mature programing. Pressuring the Hays Code on film censorship, Hollywood gained the upper hand and suddenly realized to the fullest that sex really could sell.
With “Written on the Wind” and other films of that time, Hollywood realized that controversy meant dollar signs and so filmmakers, many for the first time, were allowed to create the most honest pictures of their career, giving audience a whole new level of experience in the art of cinema.
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