‘Either our actions are determined, in which case we are not responsible for them, or they are the results of random events, in which case we are not responsible for them’
Hume
At the core of most paradoxes lie unresolved contradictions. Douglas Sirk was a man in search of ambiguity, most likely due to his own ‘split’ character, even though he never said so in so many words. But it is difficult to imagine a straight and undivided personality seeking, time after time, to populate his work with tormented and ambiguous characters. Even less likely is the idea of a happy and content artist constantly creating situations in which his characters find themselves trapped, constrained, and with nowhere to go except back to the beginning. This inability to confront and to deal with one’s own predicament, or worse, to slowly become aware of it only to attempt a mediocre and inappropriate escape, results in the failure of a human being to transcend his or her space and to ascend to betterment. Whether this interest in failure and the ambiguity that lies in many people originated in Sirk’s experiences in Nazi Germany or from some more innate predisposition (probably a combination of both), it nevertheless instilled in him a cynicism and love of irony, which, combined with a masterly craftsmanship for mise-en-scene and for working with actors, resulted in some very powerful works that could operate on different levels.

It is peculiar that such a master of irony and adroit social commentator would find himself making films for an audience that, for the most part, was unable to cope with irony and took his message at face value, and often failed to recognize that they were the target of Sirk’s cynical and critical social comments. But in spite of the fact that his true intentions and abilities would only become apparent in the 1970’s thanks to the work of several film critics and theorists (Les Cahiers Du Cinema seem to have recognized his talent as an author already in the early 1960’s), his films nevertheless obtained a considerable amount of success, with, for example, Imitation of Life (59) becoming at that time the most successful film commercially in Universal’s history. Where most directors would try to capitalize on this success and continue riding the wave of popularity, Sirk, who had become increasingly frustrated with Hollywood and certain aspects of the American lifestyle and mentality, decided to leave Hollywood. Illness may have forced his hand in this choice, or rather, as Sirk said himself ‘I felt I had to stick to my decision to take my illness as more than coincidence’[1]. Calling it quit when you are on top clearly demonstrates willpower, freedom of spirit and independence of choice, the same traits that are required when deciding to stage a leftwing play in Nazi Germany, after receiving warnings by these same Nazis not to proceed. When it came to making life changing decisions and acting in the face of adversity, Douglas Sirk never faltered.
Yet, he firmly believed in the concept of fate and destiny, often referring to the Gods’ intervention in his life, while at the same time admitting to being an atheist[2]. How does one reconcile a firm belief in fate and destiny with a lack of religious convictions? Is it possible to make peace with a world where your life is controlled by some invisible hand but this hand is not the work of God? Who are these Gods that intervened in his life (and in his films) and that Sirk kept referring to as if he could no longer distinguish between reality and the world of a Greek tragedy, in which he would play a part, knowing on the one hand that these mechanical devices called Deus Ex Machina that appear throughout or at the end of the play to change the situation only exist as artifice, while on the other hand believing that behind their falseness and mechanical purpose might perhaps reside a greater truth. There lies one of the many paradoxes that are at the core of Sirk’s personality and central to most of his work. It only seems fitting and appropriate to analyze the concept of fate in the work of Douglas Sirk, and whether this concept is a narrative device used by the director or rather a statement of his beliefs, by looking at the films he made while at Universal in the 1950’s, not only because they are the texts for which he became famous in film theory and which ‘constitute the body of work that is the most coherent and better structured (thematically and stylistically)’[3], but also because they take a critical look at the American way of life, itself a cradle of irony and paradox.

It has been argued repeatedly in various texts that Sirk needed to use irony to bypass the constraints placed on him by the American studios. Open and direct social criticism would not have been acceptable, as it most likely would have meant failure at the box office. Sirk, determined to nevertheless offer more than just the average Hollywood melodrama, thus resorted to the use of ‘tricks’ and staged elaborate and complex mise en scenes to force the audience into a process of reflection and introspection.  American audiences in the 1950’s were not able to deal with irony and, consequently, film studios did not allow most directors to openly deviate from the standard ‘fare’ and to have unhappy endings in their films. The American audience, itself clearly a microcosm of American society, was geared to respond to traditional narrative structures in which moments of pain and drama were expected but only with the knowledge that these would be resolved. In the customary dramatic structure of most American films, emotions were usually displayed simplistically and had a propensity to remain ‘on the surface’, as illustrated by the following quote from Thomas Elsaesser:

The American cinema, determined as it is by an ideology of the spectacle and the spectacular, is essentially dramatic (as opposed to lyrical; ie. concerned with mood or the inner self) and not conceptual (dealing with ideas and the structures of cognition and perception)…[4]

A look at the history of melodrama, including the Greek plays of Euripides, which in spite of their cynicism are indicative of the essential configuration of melodrama, shows that its basic structure made it appropriate to be accepted by the American audience. In many ways, melodrama seems to have been made for America, and various aspects of melodrama have been and continue to be found in several popular film genres in America, including action, suspense and even comedy. And while it is clearly dangerous to associate melodrama with a specific country since many hybrids of melodrama can be found across various art forms in many different cultures and countries, there is clearly a connection between the basic melodramatic structure and the ‘naïve moral and emotional idealism in the American psyche’[5].
Several key ingredients tend to be common to most melodramas. For instance, the use of exaggerated emotions as a way to express the repressed, the emphasis placed on objects and mise-en-scene to compensate for the lack of psychological depth in the characters, and the focus on making plain what is ambiguous, on setting up doubt only so that it can be removed. Additionally, aside from a few exceptions, the message conveyed by most melodramas throughout history has been a positive and optimistic one. The trapped situations in which the characters found themselves were set to pave the way for a release, a release that would allow normality to return. The Deus Ex Machina which originated in the plays of the ancient Greeks, served not only to unlock a situation that was ‘blocked’, but more importantly to restore faith in the way the world operated. If the audience of the plays were put in the uncomfortable position of having to witness characters trapped by destiny and stuck in situations with no way out, they were also provided with a release that restored their belief and optimism in the order of things. In that sense, one of the main elements of ‘melodramatic dramaturgy is the consistent relationship between the disruption of society and its final restoration to harmony.’[6]
It is therefore important to note that a distinction exists between tragedy and melodrama, in spite of the fact that both have become interchangeable and so loosely defined that it is now difficult to speak of them as genres. ‘In melodrama, death is never inevitable; in tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone’s destiny is known.’[7] If death is never inevitable in melodrama, as JD Mason believes, it implies that the characters, while trapped momentarily in situations that have been created by what seems to be the work of fate, do have the ability to influence their destiny by changing the course of events, usually for the better.
Melodrama, hence, rather than tragedy, thrives on the dichotomy and paradox that lies at the core of American society, a society which is built on optimism and the pursuit of individual goals, where one is expected to succeed and to always get what one wants, in spite of the obstacles that destiny may generate. Yet, this constant optimism creates a surface layer of reality that is not always compatible with the harsh reality of the world. Americans often find themselves caught between the standards of what should be, as laid out by societal expectations built on optimism and the rejection of failure, and what really is, which is defined by what happens to all of us, regardless of our disposition and the culture we live in. This ‘discrepancy between seeming and being’[8] in American society extends by default to the characters in American melodrama.
America in the 1950’s could be described as a repressed society where various conventions acted as oppressive forces and kept the members of that society from breaking out of their situation. These conventions served to reinforce the belief that everything was as it should be, thus negating the possibility of anything being wrong. This inability for a society to allow its citizen to fully express unconscious and repressed desires proved fertile ground for Freudian ideas and melodramatic situations to flourish. Yet, it must be pointed out again that basic melodramatic structure, as opposed to tragedy (which is one way for problems to be dealt with – albeit a tragic one), does not allow for the repressed emotions/problems to be fully dealt since, traditionally, melodramatic situations have a positive ending which restores things to ‘normal’. But this state of normality is in fact, a state of unbalance, the source of the original problem that continues to remain unnoticed by the protagonists in themelodrama.
Fate, in this case, is a tool, a narrative technique that allows characters to be trapped and emotions to be explored superficially. But Americans, while many believe in fate, believe most of all in the ability of the individual to influence his or her life. The Gods of ancient Greece were thus replaced in the 1950’s American film melodrama by fate as a device that existed primarily for the sake of the narrative. Unexpected series of circumstances arose only to help move the plot along and to set the framework for the latter ‘release’, and not to imply that the hand of some invisible power is at work. In the traditional American melodrama, the happy ending was thus not ironic, but represented the only possible and logical conclusion for the audience.
The melodrama, in its various forms, therefore clearly existed long before Sirk made his films for Universal in the 1950’s and its basic structure was there for Sirk to expand on. There seems to be a belief in reading various papers on Sirk that he invented the Hollywood melodrama, that he is the Hollywood melodrama. What Sirk did was bring intelligence, cynicism and irony and created several films within the span of a few years that constituted perhaps the first organized and structured body of work within that ‘genre’. But more importantly, he changed the overall positive tones and happy endings of traditional Hollywood melodramas into mostly pessimistic stories, and did so by hiding the irony from the audience that watched his films. As mentioned earlier, the American audience did not want pessimistic stories, nor was it able to deal with irony, as pointed out by Sirk himself when he stated that ‘…in general this public is too simple and too naïve to be susceptible to irony. It requires clearly delineated positions, for and against’[9].  And the idea of characters being trapped by destiny works in American melodrama only as long as it is used to release emotions and provide an opening later in the film when all can become well again. To use fate as a message of hopelessness and fatality goes against the spirit of individuality and of being in control, which is so essential to the American character. It thus cannot be said that Sirk’s melodrama were the Hollywood melodrama. Sirk used an existing configuration and the basic rules of melodrama and ‘intensified them’[10] by hiding social statements within an already established structure. He added a new layer, a new level, and turned the elements of melodramatic dramaturgy into ironic messages to critic the society in which he lived, a society which he had loved but had also learned to dislike.

‘…that the society depicted in most of the films is characterised by a smugness and complacency masking decay and disintegration from within, just beneath the surface.’[11]

Irony provided a second layer to his films, the first one being generated by the basic structure of melodrama. This second layer added a political level to what would otherwise be a traditional and flat narrative experience. This is the layer that turned Sirk into an auteur as opposed to a director of weepies. However, while Sirk created this layer through irony, parts of his personality suggested that irony may have existed in Sirk on different levels. He clearly used it consciously as a master social commentator and adroit metteur-en-scene with extensive background and training in the art of staging melodramatic and ‘tragedy’ plays, but applied it also on a deeper level, one that added another layer of complexity, intelligence and ambiguity to his films.

Depending on which side of the nature vs. nurture debate one stands, and thus whether one believes that our character is mostly the result of our genes or of our experiences, it might easy to conclude that, knowing about Sirk’s experiences in Nazi Germany, his personality was greatly influenced by these same experiences. Following the same line of reasoning, we can also presume that anyone who has had their son taken away by their ex-wife and turned into a Nazi would most likely be marked for life and develop a certain cynicism about the world. In the few interviews he gave, Sirk mentioned only a few happy moments in his life and seemed more interested in discussing unhappiness. One could easily argue that happiness is what one makes of it, and that, barring some unfortunate series of circumstances, it is up to us to seek it and to welcome it in our lives. But Sirk considered happiness to be out of reach for most people, a mirage that pretends to exist, appearing at times, but only to escape again when it is perhaps most needed. ‘True happiness never lasts’[12] he said, with the assurance of a man who lived long enough to know and to understand the ephemerality of the concept. He described the one year he spent as a farmer upon arriving in the promised land, years before he would achieve some notoriety at Universal, as the happiest during his time in America. Sirk was also quick to point out and to emphasize in many of his interviews ‘…the brevity of happiness’, adding ‘I am not as pessimistic as I may sometimes appear. I do believe in happiness…happiness must be there, because it can bedestroyed’[13].
Such a statement, in fact, does reveal quite forcefully the pessimistic nature of the man, in addition to exposing a deep-rooted sense of irony and cynicism. It is no great revelation that Sirk found irony to be a favourite mode of expression. Irony is everywhere in his work. It permeates the subject matters of all his films and has been discussed repeatedly by critics in the context of his technique and style. Sirk himself admitted that irony is one of the most important underlying themes of his work[14], and he used it virulently in his camera angles, his choice of colours, of titles, the framing of his shots, his subject matters, and occasionally in his choice of actors. Even in Magnificent Obsession (54), which is quite a positive and optimistic text by Sirk’s standards, irony constantly lingers under the surface, even if by the director’s own admission, this irony is closer to antimony than to ‘standard’ irony[15]. In fact, there is so much irony in Sirk that it is difficult to imagine that it was always used deliberately, to make a point about society or to trick the head of a studio, or even to get a specific message across to an audience in such a way that it overrides that audience’s natural shield to comprehension due to the social constraints and paradigms that have shaped their frame of thinking. Perhaps too much credit has been attributed to a man who was in fact only expressing an innate sense of distrust for the world and its inhabitants (‘As far as I am concerned, heaven is stingy’[16]). Perhaps Sirk was at the right place at the right time in 1950 America, ironically the victim of fortunate circumstances, which he never fully realized. Could it be argued that, had he been able to get his way and to have complete control over his subject matters and crew, as opposed to being the leader of what Jean-Loup Bourget has called the ‘Collective Douglas Sirk’[17], an amalgam of various craftsmen whose contributions provided the platform for Sirk to excel on, many of his films would have had, potentially, negative endings, and the underlying gloom of the work would have been free to come more forcefully to the surface? Under such a scenario, the constraints that provided him with the necessary laboratory, the pressure, to create these works that worked in the 1950’s on one level for the audience, and for the past thirty years or so on another level for a different audience, would have been removed. And without these constraints, it is likely that the effect on audiences would have been a different one, potentially resulting in a negative reaction to the pessimism of the message. Moreover, wouldn’t be fair to say that, as pointed out again by Bourget, if Sirk was at the mercy of the themes and crew provided to him by Universal, and in spite of his ability to build and develop what was given to him into works that could stand on their own, then Sirk was not a man who had full control over his subject matter and thus could not be said to ‘dwell on themes that meant a lot to him’[18], which in turn could only imply that if such themes were to nevertheless appear repeatedly that they must be the result of Sirk’s own psyche coming to the surface and out of its own will dominating the space of the texts?
Most critics today seem to focus on the use of irony in Sirk’s films, and especially in his work for Universal, as a deliberate attempt at making a statement, or rather at engaging a process of awareness and discovery about subjects that could otherwise not be discussed without resorting to stylistic innovation and devices. In such discussions, irony is a tool, a method that is used by Sirk like a surgeon uses a scalpel, with precision and restraint. It exists as an enabler, one of the tricks, perhaps the main one, in a panoply that contains many more. Yet, what these critics fail to realize is that Sirk did not strictly use irony as a device, whether stylistically or narratively. Irony was Sirk and it was engrained into the deepest corners of his soul. Without irony, there would have been no Sirk. Without irony, most of his films would cease to function and would fall apart, pretty pictures with no soul, form obliterating content. Consequently, that his 1950’s films have come to be associated with the epitome of American Melodrama is in itself ironic since it is the irony that lived within Sirk that made the films work for the audience (an audience which, as we have said before, could most likely not see through the irony) and the critic. But it is this underlying irony that added a necessary edge to his films and, which, somehow, while not fully recognized, or acceptable, by the audience on a conscious level, must have spoken to something hidden deeper in the American psyche, an awareness that all is not right, that things are not necessarily what they appear. But this ‘feeling’ is bound to remain hidden, working at the level of the subconscious, not allowed to come to the surface as it would clash with the simpler set of rules that have been laid by societal expectations and the guidelines of the American way of life. It is worth pointing out that Sirk was a trained stage director who worked with Brecht and gained a considerable amount of experience in the German Avant-Garde theatre of the 1920’s and early 1930’s. Like Brecht, he believed in creating distance[19] and rejected many traditional narrative or structural tools such as suspense or action. He also had a fondness for plays and novels that offered precedents to melodrama, such as the Greek tragedies of Euripides and the plays of Shakespeare. He was thus well versed into the mechanics of stage mise-en-scene and it is clear that he was a calculating mind, and that very little in his films was not carefully and tediously planned. Consequently it can be said that these films worked, at that particular time in American cinema, because of the technique and because of the intrinsic nature of its director, a nature profoundly shaped by his European experiences and view of the world. Affecting this nature was also Sirk’s growing unhappiness with America, a feeling that must have proved even more pronounced in light of his initial respect and admiration for that country.
While it is clear that Sirk’s oeuvre would not be what it is without the use of irony, much less attention has been paid to another important recurring theme in his films, one that, like irony, provides one of the most essential elements of the Sirkian system and of the director’s relationship to the concept of fate: cynicism. Whereas irony can more or less exists independently as a stylistic device, a tool employed by dramatists and tragedists throughout the history of human drama, cynicism undoubtedly exists first and foremost as part of a human nature, an aspect of a personality that helps shape one’s character and greatly affects one’s view of the world. And Sirk’s view of the world certainly helped fashion his work in theatre and in film.  Sirk had little faith in man and this must have created a natural distrust in the motives of others. Undoubtedly shaped by his traumatic experiences in Germany, one can feel in Sirk’s films (and in his personality) a profound unhappiness at life. When he said that ‘everything, even life, inevitably slips away from you: you cannot grasp, cannot touch the impression, you can only reach its reflections’[20], he was not referring to what the Japanese call ‘mono no aware’, which Donald Richie, as quoted in Paul Schrader’s book ‘The Transcendental Style in Film’, describes as ‘a resigned sadness, a calm and knowing serenity which maintains despite the uncertainty of life and the things of this world’. While films by Ozu, like the films of Sirk, tend to explore the vanishing away of the world (and in the process make certain points about society and societal structures) and use irony and form to create disparity between reality and the surface of things or the illusion of reality, they leave one with a sense of peace and calm, in spite of their message of resignation and sadness. Sirk’s films, on the other hand, disturb and create a sense of the unachievable without acceptance. They speak of unfinished business that can never be finished. They create a feeling of helplessness since we are told that whatever we try, it will never be enough to change the course of our destiny. And the disruption that we feel is accentuated by the fact that the films do not offer closure. We are left hanging, like Sirk’s characters, between our desire to believe in our ability to make a difference in the world and the inescapable weight of a destiny devoid of happiness and constantly bearing down on us. It is this uncertainty that robs us of our ability to make peace with Sirk’s message. As stated by Dave Grosz, ‘the most disarming experience for characters and audience are the realisations of the simultaneous closeness and distance of this barrier’[21]. We feel the potential escape within reach but can never get close enough to achieve it. And in Sirk’s films, the characters that become aware of their space and attempt to transcend it are the ones that usually end up running into this barrier, as if the world was punishing them for trying to escape their condition. They ‘emerge as lesser human beings for having become wise and acquiescent to the ways of the world’[22]. The message is clear: our chances of influencing our destinies are very small. In fact, it is probably not even worth trying since any attempt is foredoomed and can only bring a small taste of freedom, thereby rendering the experience even more painful once this taste is taken away. This message is present in All that Heaven Allows (55), Written on the Wind (56), Imitations of Life (58) and The Tarnished Angels (58). In each one, a character becomes aware of his or her condition, his or her place in society and attempts to transcend that space by reaching into another one, one which we, the audience, know to be a better one. Yet, we witness the characters make feeble and inappropriate attempts, which we realize quickly can only be doomed. We are thus placed in a position of watching these characters slowly move towards a doomed end, like laboratory animals desperately trying to escape the cruel hand of the scientist (in a cinematic context, the scientist is no other than Douglas Sirk. But in a Godless world, who controls this merciless fate?). And while this effect does allow us to reflect on the characters and their situation (it is a distance that creates association), it clearly does so in fairly brutal fashion. Unlike traditional Hollywood melodrama (I am referring here to what can be described as the irony-free ‘weepie’) in which these ‘traps’ exist strictly for the purpose of the narrative and to trigger emotions, Sirk’s melodramas provided a much different message, a well construed one, but a very negative one. Here, the happy end becomes ‘something very unhappy’[23], something unreal and forced.
Sirk’s cynicism ran deep. He spreads his distrust of the world and his belief that ‘man is not created by reason, but by a different brand of logic, indecipherable to him’ [24] throughout his films and used 1950 America as the perfect canvas for his experiments. Like his characters, Sirk had not made his peace with the world and was torn between what is and what should ideally be. And as in his films, there was a disparity within Douglas Sirk that resulted in the ideological Sirk and the cynical Sirk. This cynicism could indeed border on the cruel as illustrated by this statement ‘I am interested in people who believe in a god of revenge, because I doubt that revenge is an ethical thing.’[25] Revenge is thus taken out of the responsibility of the individual and put in the hands of fate. Fate can become ‘a kind of unspeakably sadistic evil’[26]. It is easier to live with negative emotions knowing that they are the product of fate. The same way it is easier for many people to believe that something greater is behind the evils of this world, rather than to accept that the responsibility lies in all of us, in the human person only. It is as if Sirk was too cynical to believe in God, but at the same time could not accept a world where so much evil could be the creation of humans only. His characters thus existed as objects, not only through the stylization and technique, which he used in his films, but also through his belief system. If you take away free will and the ability to influence one’s path in life, you are left with objects at the mercy of fate, a fate which in the world of Douglas Sirk could be a very cruel one indeed.

Therefore, the combination of Sirk’s knowledge and control of traditional melodramatic structure with his use of irony and cynicism produce three different layers of comments in his films, creating at times contradictions, themselves the result of Sirk’s own paradoxical view of the world. This combination results in a distanciation, not necessarily between the film and the audience, since the audience is in fact forced to immerse themselves into the text through these same distanciation devices, but between the film and the director.

‘Sirk achieves, through stylisation and parody, a distanciation towards his melodramatic material. He uses the cliché-image systematically and introduces a distance, not between the film and the audience, but between the film and the metteur-en-scene’.[27]

This view is corroborated by Paul Willemen who stated that a distance is created between the director and the action, which allows Sirk to parody the traditional petit bourgeois ideology found in Hollywood melodramas[28], and thus, by extension, in middle class America. And the third layer, the one that achieves to create this distance between the director and his films, is born out of Sirk’s cynicism rather than through a deliberate attempt at extending the parody, which is already achieved through irony and the use of standard melodramatic technique. If indeed Sirk’s texts created while at Universal operate on three levels, it is thus not surprising that most of it was lost (while still appealing) on an audience in 1950 that was only used to dealing with the first level.
The concept of fate in the films of Douglas Sirk has therefore more importance than it does in traditional melodrama, and must be analysed differently, in the context of the director’s personality and experiences. For Sirk, fate was not simply a tool of melodrama form and style, it was a tragic reality of existence. It relentlessly spread its evil on the world, and did so without the hand of a master planner, thereby turning us (and the characters of his films) into simple objects, at the mercy of random negative events and without the possibility of aspiring to something better. For Sirk, it seemed that we were all born only to suffer.
Yet, there is little doubt that this layered combination is what provided the films of Douglas Sirk with the depth, intelligence, richness and complexity that have come to characterise them. Without irony and cynicism, his films would have been little more than the weepies he disliked so much.

Bibliography

Biette Jean-Claude and Rabourdin Dominique, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 293, 1978

Bourget Jean-Loup, ‘Situation de Sirk’, Positif no. 137, April 1972

Camper Fred, ‘The Films of Douglas Sirk’, Screen vol. 12, no. 2, 1971

Elsaesser Thomas, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Bill Nichols, Editor, Movies and Methods, Volume II. An Anthology (University of California Press, 1976)

Daney Serge and Noames Jean-Louis, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 189, 1967

Donohue Joseph W. (ed), Theatre in the Age of Kean (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975)

Foucault Michel, ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics, Spring 1986

Godard Jean-Luc, ‘Des Larmes et de la Vitesse’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 94, 1959

Grosz Dave, ‘The First Legion: Vision and Perception in Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971

Halliday Jon (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

Klinger Barbara (ed), Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994)

Mason JD (ed), Melodrama and the Myth of America (Indiana University Press, 1993)

Mercer John and Shingler Martin (eds), Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility (Wallflower Press, 2004)

Mulvey, Laura. “Notes on Sirk and Melodrama”, Movie, 25 (1977-78)

Schrader Paul (ed), Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Da Capo Press, 1972)

Singer Ben, ‘Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and its Contexts’, in John Belton, Editor, Film and Culture (Columbia University Press, 2001)

Willemen Paul, ‘Towards an Analysis of the Sirkian System’, Screen vol. 13 no. 4, Winter 1972/3

Willemen Paul, ‘Distanciation and Douglas Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971

www.imdb.com

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[1] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[2] ‘Les problemes de la religion m’ont en effet toujours passionne, bien que je ne sois pas croyant.’, translated by Eric Mahleb. Serge Daney and Jean-Louis Noames, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 189, 1967, p.25

[3] ‘…que ce sont le films de la derniere periode americaine qui constituent le corpus le plus coherent, le mieux structure (thematiquement et stylistiquement) et don’t l’interet est le plus grand.’, translated by Eric Mahleb. Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Situation de Sirk’, Positif no. 137, April 1972, p.41

[4] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Bill Nichols, Editor, Movies and Methods, Volume II. An Anthology (University of California Press, 1976), p.176

[5] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Bill Nichols, Editor, Movies and Methods, Volume II. An Anthology (University of California Press, 1976), p.182

[6] Joseph W. Donohue (ed), Theatre in the Age of Kean (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), pp. 111-112

[7] JD Mason (ed), Melodrama and the Myth of America (Indiana University Press, 1993)

[8] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Bill Nichols, Editor, Movies and Methods, Volume II. An Anthology (University of California Press, 1976), p.188

[9] ‘C’est seulement qu’il est en general trop simple et trop naïf…pour etre sensible a l’ironie. Il lui faut des positions tranchees, le pour ou le contre.’ Translated by Eric Mahleb. Serge Daney and Jean-Louis Noames, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 189, 1967, p.23

[10] Paul Willemen, ‘Distanciation and Douglas Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971, p.65

[11] Paul Willemen, ‘Towards an Analysis of the Sirkian System’, Screen vol. 13 no. 4, Winter 1972/3, p.133

[12] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[13] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[14] ‘You see, irony is an element in a number of my pictures.’ Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[15] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[16] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[17] Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Situation de Sirk’, Positif no. 137, April 1972, p.43

[18] ‘…ressasse des themes qui lui sont chers.’, translated by Eric Mahleb. Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Situation de Sirk’, Positif no. 137, April 1972, p.46

[19] ‘Art must establish distances.’ Sirk quoted in Dave Grosz, ‘The First Legion: Vision and Perception in Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971, p.101

[20] Serge Daney and Jean-Louis Noames, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 189, 1967, p.70

[21] Dave Grosz, ‘The First Legion: Vision and Perception in Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971, p.103

[22] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Bill Nichols, Editor, Movies and Methods, Volume II. An Anthology (University of California Press, 1976), p.177

[23] Jean-Claude Biette and Dominique Rabourdin, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 293, 1978, p.22

[24] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[25] Jon Halliday (ed), Sirk on Sirk: Conversations with Jon Halliday (New and revised edition, London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997)

[26] Fred Camper, ‘The Films of Douglas Sirk’, Screen vol. 12, no. 2, 1971, p.62. The concept of sadism in the films of Douglas Sirk was also very briefly mentioned in Daney Serge and Noames Jean-Louis, ‘Entretien avec Douglas Sirk’, Cahiers du Cinéma no. 189, 1967, p.19

[27] ‘Sirk, procede, par stylisation et parodie, a une distanciation par rapport a son materiel melodramatique. Il utilise systematiquement le cliché-image et introduit une distance, non pas entre le film et le public, mais entre le film et le metteur en scene’, translated by Eric Mahleb. Jean-Loup Bourget, ‘Situation de Sirk’, Positif no. 137, April 1972, p.40

[28] Paul Willemen, ‘Distanciation and Douglas Sirk’, Screen vol. 12 no. 2, 1971, p.67