Written on the Wind

Perhaps the definitive Douglas Sirk production, Written on the Wind is based on the novel by Robert Wilder. The story revolves around the Hadleys, a wealthy but thoroughly debauched family of Texas oil millionaires. Robert Stack is self-destructive alcoholic Kyle Hadley, while Dorothy Malone won an ...more

Douglas Sirk's lurid melodrama could well be the most gloriously hyperbolic of the German-born director's films. One of his now-heralded "women's pictures" for Universal in the 1950s, Written on the Wind finds Sirk once again elevating what he himself called "impossible" material to the level of pop art. The trite plot, bubbling with dime-store psychology and Freudian innuendo, follows the heated shenanigans of an unhappy foursome: sibling oil-dynasty millionaires Kyle (Robert Stack) and Marylee ...more