WRITTEN IN THE WIND [1956 /2022] [The Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [USA Release]
The Story of a Family’s Ugly Secret That Thrusts Their Private Lives into Public View!
The Technicolor expressionism of Douglas Sirk reached a fever pitch with this operatic tragedy, which finds the director pushing his florid visuals and his critiques of American culture to their subversive extremes. Alcoholism, nymphomania, impotence, and deadly jealousy — these are just some of the toxins coursing through a massively wealthy, degenerate Texan oil family. When a sensible secretary Lucy Moore Hadley [Lauren Bacall] has the misfortune of marrying the clan’s neurotic scion Kyle Hadley [Robert Stack], it drives a wedge between him and his lifelong best friend Mitch Wayne [Rock Hudson] that unleashes a maelstrom of psychosexual angst and fury. Featuring an unforgettably debauched, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Dorothy Malone and some of Douglas Sirk’s most eye-popping mise-en-scène, ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ is as perverse a family portrait as has ever been splashed across the screen.
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FILM FACT No.1: Awards and Nominations: 1957 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Dorothy Malone. Win: Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Robert Stack. Nomination: Best Music for Original Song for Victor Young (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics). For the song “Written on the Wind,” Victor Young's nomination was posthumous. 1957 Golden Globes: Nomination: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for Dorothy Malone. 1957 Laurel Awards: Win: Golden Laurel Award for Top Male Supporting Performance for Robert Stack. Win: Golden Laurel Award for Top Female Supporting Performance for Dorothy Malone.
FILM FACT No.2: The film's source novel by Robert Wilder was inspired by the life and death of Zachary Smith Reynolds, son of R. J. Reynolds and heir to the Reynolds Tobacco fortune, who died from a gunshot wound to the head at his family's estate after a birthday party. His wife, torch singer Libby Holman, and close friend Alber Walker, fell under suspicion due to conflicting accounts given about the night's events, though neither were ever formally charged with a crime. The novel had been optioned for a feature film adaptation by RKO Pictures in 1945 before the rights were sold to International Pictures the following year after RKO shelved the project. In 1946, Universal Pictures acquired the rights to the novel after absorbing International Pictures; however, the project remained in limbo due to pressure from the Reynolds family, who threatened to launch a lawsuit against any film version of Wilder's novel. In 1955, producer Albert Zugsmith, convinced the project could be a huge success for the studio, hired George Zuckerman to adapt a screenplay, though a number of notable changes were necessitated to avoid a lawsuit from the Reynolds family: several characters were eliminated or had their ages changed; the Hadley family fortune, which in the novel had been acquired from tobacco, was instead from oil; and its setting changed from North Carolina to Texas. Several drafts of the screenplay were submitted to the Motion Picture Production Code before it was passed in late 1955. ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ was one of the very few "flat wide screen" titles to be printed "direct to matrix" by Technicolor. This specially ordered 35-mm printing process was intended to maintain the highest possible print quality, as well as to protect the negative. Another film that was also given this treatment was ‘This Island Earth,’ which was also a Universal International film. The title song “Written on the Wind,” was written by Sammy Cahn and Victor Young, was sung by the Four Aces during the opening credits. The film's score was composed by Frank Skinner.
Cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, Grant Williams, Robert J. Wilke, Edward C. Platt, Harry Shannon, John Larch, Joseph Granby, Roy Glenn, Maidie Norman, William Schallert, Joanne Jordan, Dani Crayne, Dorothy Porter, Benjie Bancroft (uncredited), Lulu Mae Bohrman (uncredited), Gail Bonney (uncredited), Paul Bradley (uncredited), Robert Brubaker (uncredited), Boyd Cabeen (uncredited), George Calliga (uncredited), Dick Cherney (uncredited), Carl Christian (uncredited), Kevin Corcoran (uncredited), Oliver Cross (uncredited), George DeNormand (uncredited), Tom Ferrandini (uncredited), Bess Flowers (uncredited), Herschel Graham (uncredited), Marion Gray (uncredited), Stuart Hall (uncredited), Chuck Hamilton (uncredited), Don C. Harvey (uncredited), Phil Harvey (uncredited), Bert Holland (uncredited), Jane Howard (uncredited), Carlene King Johnson (uncredited), Chester Jones (uncredited), Glen Kramer (uncredited), Perk Lazelle (uncredited), King Lockwood (uncredited), Robert Lyden (uncredited), Robert Malcolm (uncredited), Colleen McClatchey (uncredited), Mathew McCue (uncredited), Harold Miller (uncredited), Ralph Moratz (uncredited), Barry Norton (uncredited), Ron Nyman (uncredited), Susan Odin (uncredited), Cynthia Patrick (uncredited), Jack Perrin (uncredited), Charles Perry (uncredited), Paul Power (uncredited), Floyd Simmons (uncredited), Ray Spiker (uncredited), Norman Stevans (uncredited), Hal Taggart (uncredited), Blaine Turner (uncredited) and Robert Winans (voice) (uncredited)
Director: Douglas Sirk
Producer: Albert Zugsmith
Screenplay: George Zuckerman (screenplay) and Robert Wilder (based on the novel)
Composer: Frank Skinner
Costume Design: Bill Thomas (gowns) and Jay A. Morley Jr. (uncredited)
Technicolor Color Consultant: William Fritzsche
Cinematography: Russell Metty, A.S.C. (Director of Photography)
Image Resolution: 1080p (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: English: 1.0 LPCM Mono Audio
English: 1.0 Dolby Digital Mono Audio
Subtitles: English
Running Time: 99 minutes
Region: Region A/1
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Universal International / The Criterion Collection
Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ [1956] Director Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece begins, like any good tragedy, with a portent, meaning “a sign or warning that a momentous or calamitous event is likely to happen.” The film opens at first light, with Kyle Hadley [Robert Stack] hurtling down a Texas road in a yellow sports car while downing a bottle of raw corn liquor. “I did want to do pictures about America,” Douglas Sirk said, “not just appeal to American tastes.” Already, Douglas Sirk has made clear his intention to do both in this film. The greasy man riding into town had long been a mainstay of American cinema. Here, Douglas Sirk replaces the towering rock formations of Monument Valley with oil derricks. We don’t know it yet, but everything Hadley sees is his, or will be soon. It isn’t enough. While the Four Aces sing of faithless lovers on the soundtrack, he gets out of his car and stumbles into his mansion.
The sound of the wind rises, a gunshot rings out, and a man emerges from the home, and then spills forward onto the driveway. The wind blowing through the pages of a desk calendar signals our move back in time to just over a year before the fateful night. In less than three minutes, Douglas Sirk has laid out the whole film: great wealth, indiscretion, and violence. Death is coming. The question isn’t even when but how and why.
After the flash-forward, the film starts its story with Lucy Moore Hadle [Lauren Bacall]. As an executive secretary at the Hadley Oil Company’s New York office, she is busy setting out some mocked-up advertisements. Company geologist Mitch Wayne [Rock Hudson] enters in search of her boss. The display stand between the two characters obscures Lucy Moore Hadle except for her legs, peeking out from a grey skirt. Mitch Wayne leans back and cocks his head; his brow wrinkles; the tips of his mouth curl just a little. When Mitch Wayne sidles up and says, “Hello,” it comes out like a come-on. Lucy Moore Hadley turns and blinks three times. Lucy Moore Hadley lips part, but she doesn’t respond, but Mitch Wayne keeps coming back.
What follows is a descent into the kind of madness that families breed. Kyle Hadley works hard to suppress his alcoholism and his jealousy of Mitch Wayne, the amiable butch he-man Kyle Hadley [Robert Stack] can never hope to be. Marylee Hadley [Dorothy Malone], who has been in love with Mitch Wayne since childhood and longs for their old closeness, tries to deny the pain of that loss through a string of hook-ups. When those don’t soothe her heart, she turns to provocation, nearly bringing everyone down with her. Lucy Moore Hadley plays the dutiful wife, though every scene she shares with Mitch Wayne feels too charged for us to buy the act wholesale. Mitch Wayne came from the other side of the tracks and raised to his present position thanks in large part to the largesse of his friend’s family. Mitch Wayne and Lucy Moore Hadley are disciplined and decorous, which sets them apart from the degeneracy of the American aristocracy as represented by the Hadley’s clan family.
They carry themselves well because there may not be anyone to catch them if they fall. Of course, they have fallen, for each other, yet, incapable of adultery or rupturing their familiar ties, they choose to suffer. But something is in the air, and Marylee Hadley and Kyle Hadley are not so stupefied that they cannot sniff it out. The threat becomes undeniable when Kyle discovers he may be impotent. The moment is played as a personal psychotic break, but it represents an existential threat for the Hadley clan. Jasper Hadley [Robert Keith] is the frail, old patriarch of the family — will soon pass his empire to two irresponsible children with no heirs of their own. The dynasty is on the verge of collapse.
‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ was on Robert Wilder’s racy 1946 novel, was the perfect vehicle to see how far Hollywood could go. It is a frenzied dance among changing partners who all want badly and behave poorly. In its reviews of the script, the Hays Office repeatedly asked for some line condemning the profligacy of Marylee Hadley, but it never came. Marylee Hadley does wind up without the man she loves, but even saints have watched men walk out the door never to return. It’s no condemnation; it’s a tough break. Marylee Hadley ends the film alone in her dead father’s office, shorn of a brother and a lover too. All Marylee Hadley has left is more money than God.
Producer Albert Zugsmith had a publicist’s sense of which way the wind was blowing. Albert Zugsmith guessed, correctly, that American audiences of the fifties were interested in seeing what was being kept from them by the restrictions of The Hays Code. The era may be popularly remembered as one of conformity and prosperity, but it was also the decade that saw Billy Graham’s rise, the launch of Playboy, and the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott. Depending on which way you looked, America was either a “Populuxe” wonderland or a country on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
WRITTEN IN THE WIND MUSIC TRACK LIST
WRITTEN IN THE WIND (Music Victor Young) (Lyrics Sammy Cahn) [Sung by The Four Aces]
TEMPTATION (uncredited) (Written by Nacio Herb Brown) (Lyrics by Arthur Freed) [Heard in the scene where Marylee Hadley dances and Jasper Hadley dies]
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Blu-ray Image Quality – Universal International and The Criterion Collection presents us this film ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ with a stunning 1080p restoration Technicolor image and enhanced with 1.85:1 aspect ratio, which is a vast improvement over the earlier inferior DVD release, and gives you something that is now enormously impressive, especially with the massive upgrade in quality visual splendour with this Blu-ray release. The restoration work has also cleaned this up beautifully. Revisiting the old inferior DVD I was surprised to see how clean that presentation was, damage not coming off all that heavy, but the restoration work here has been significantly more thorough, a handful of very faint scratches popping up. It feels like this title has been a long time coming, but I’m happy to say that the wait was very much worth it. This new 2K digital transfer restoration was done on a ARRISCAN film scanner at NBCUniversal StudioPost in Universal City, California, from the 35mm original camera negative. A vintage 35mm dye-transfer print, courtesy of the Academy Film Archive, was used for color reference. Transfer supervisors were Ed Lachman and Lee Cline. Colourist was Joe Gowler of Harbor Picture Company, New York. Disc mastering was by Pixelogic Media.
Blu-ray Audio Quality – Universal International and The Criterion Collection brings us the film ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ with one standard 1.0 LPCM Mono Audio experience. The original monaural soundtrack was from the 35mm magnetic master. The audio sound, for the most part, is nicely reproduced, with plenty of presence and depth. However, I noticed a couple of areas where it felt a tad compressed and as a result a bit weak. It is hard to tell if this effect is an inherited limitation or something that was introduced during the restoration process, but I had to turn up the volume of my system slightly more than usual just to be able to hear clearly all of the exchanges. There are no distortions, audio dropouts, or other similar anomalies to report for The Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of the film ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND.’
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Blu-ray Special Features and Extras:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Special Feature: Acting for Douglas Sirk [2008] [1080p / 480i] [1.37:1] [23:23] With this featurette, we get to view a 2008 documentary featuring interviews who discusses two of director Douglas Sirk’s films that includes ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ [1956] and ‘The Tarnished Angels’ [1956] and the two films shared a number of collaborators, and here to talk about it is Allison Anders [Filmmaker], actors Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack, Rock Hudson, Albert Zugsmith [Producer] and Douglas Sirk [Director], who all reminisce about working with the director Douglas Sirk on both ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ and ‘The Tarnished Angels’ in this archival interviews. Rock Hudson recalls his close professional relationship with director Douglas Sirk and how the director instilled in him much-needed confidence at the start of his career, while Robert Stack lauds Douglas Sirk for giving supporting actors as much attention as the leads. Dorothy Malone recalls Douglas Sirk as “the most sensitive, intelligent man,” and producer Albert Zugsmith talks about his “gentleness” and “humanness.” Douglas Sirk himself is also on hand and remembers his difficulties working with actress Dorothy Malone, who was a devout Catholic and uncomfortable performing the pivotal lewd dance scene in the film. Douglas Sirk also classifies ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ as “an apocalyptic film... about the downfall of the American middle class.” Filmmaker Allison Anders chimes in as well with her impressions of Douglas Sirk and his work in this often fascinating featurette. This featurette is dedicated to the memory of Hans Peter Kochenrath [Movie producer] [1936 – 1999] and Gary Graver [American film director] [1938 – 2006]. This was a FICTION FACTORY production.
Special Feature: Patricia White [2021] [1080p] [1.78:1] [20:40] With this featurette, we get to view an interview, that was shot by The Criterion Collection in 2021, where Film scholar Patricia White discusses the complicated interplay of gender, sexuality, and class on display in the melodrama of the movie ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND.’ Film scholar Patricia White calls ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ a “tour de force” and “the perfect example of the family melodrama.” Patricia White discusses the complicated interplay of gender, sexuality, and class on display in ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND.’ The featurette is a piece of social criticism, especially relating to excess wealth poisons the Hadley family. On the surface, everything is pretty, but beneath, there’s rot. This featurette is an overview of director Douglas Sirk’s career from his beginnings in Germany to his lush Universal Studio melodramas of the 1950’s. Patricia White notes that melodrama makes a statement in many ways — acting, photography, Technicolor, and music. Though the opening depicts physical violence, the film is really about the violence of emotions. At this time in Hollywood, films were trying to attract audiences with adult themes. Patricia White analyses the movie within its melodramatic context, citing the violent emotion and dark secrets that drive the plot, and examines playwright Berthold Brecht’s profound influence on Douglas Sirk in this intelligent and absorbing 2021 interview. To emphasise what Patricia White is talking about with regards to the scenario of the film ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND,’ we get to view several clips from that 1956 movie.
Special Feature: Trailer [1956] [480p] [1.78:1] [2:47] This is the Original Theatrical Trailer for the film ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND.’
BONUS: An essay entitled “NO GOOD END” by filmmaker and critic Blair McClendon. Plus: CAST. CREDITS. ABOUT THE TRANSFER. SPECIAL THANKS. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. PRODUCTION CREDITS. On the front of this essay, as is a full size image of the Blu-ray Cover that could be mounted in a frame. Blair McClendon is a writer, photographer and filmmaker and he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
PLUS: Blu-ray Cover illustration by Sam Hadley, who has worked with clients all over the world and they include Coca Cola, Adidas, Time Out New York, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sony Music, Aardman, and Rockstar, creating book covers, billboards, editorials, posters, and anything else an art director can dream up. As an experienced illustrator Sam Hadley is comfortable with the most challenging of projects.
Finally, ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ alone makes it unsurprising that Douglas Sirk’s melodramas are favourites for psychoanalytic readings. Douglas Sirk’s characters are frequently tormented by the strength or inadequacy of their own repressive faculties. Douglas Sirk’s great talent was not to introduce psychology to the popular arts but to make out of psychologism a kind of domestic action film. Douglas Sirk’s best-known films are all for the masses, yet their mysteries are always more distressing than those of whodunits. He asks again and again, “How could a people live like this?” They are enmeshed in their complexes and also a web of sexism, racism, and class struggle. The “right choice” is often quite obvious — only it requires a value system that is outside the world they live in. The men and women of ‘WRITTEN IN THE WIND’ are racked with guilt and tangled in increasingly indistinct relationships, but the central question remains “Will they act?” When they do, it is almost always catastrophic, and so much so that when the “happy end” comes, it is impossible to believe. The scene, allegedly requested by Rock Hudson’s agent, to show Mitch Wayne and Lucy Moore Hadley driving away from the mansion. Their relationship begins in earnest after Kyle Hadley and Jasper Hadley has died after falling down the flight of stairs, Lucy Moore Hadley has lost her child, and Mitch Wayne has narrowly escaped a murder conviction. “In tragedy, the [hero’s] life always ends,” Douglas Sirk said. “In melodrama, he lives on — in an unhappy happy end.” Very Highly Recommended!
Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado
Le Cinema Paradiso
United Kingdom
