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Douglas Sirk (April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.

Sirk was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, Germany to Danish parents. He was raised in Denmark, but later moved to Germany as a teenager. He spread his education over three universities. He started his career in 1922 in the theatre of the Weimar Republic, including the direction of an early production of The Threepenny Opera. He joined UFA (Universum Film AG) in 1934, but left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and Jewish wife. On arrival in the United States, he soon changed his Germanic name. By 1942 he was in Hollywood, directing the stridently anti-Nazi Hitler's Madman.

He made his name with a series of lush, colorful melodramas for Universal-International Pictures from 1952 to 1958: Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows (preserved by the US National Film Registry), Written on the Wind, and Imitation of Life. But it was at the pinnacle of his high-profile accomplishments as Universal's most successful director that he left the United States and filmmaking. He died in Lugano, Switzerland nearly thirty years later, with only a brief and obscure return behind the camera in Germany in the 1970s.

Contents 1 Sirk's reputation 1.1 Contemporary reception 1.2 Later reception 2 Partial filmography 3 See also 4 Modern Popular Culture 5 Quotes about Sirk 6 References 7 Bibliography 8 External links

Sirk's melodramas of the 1950's were generally very poorly received by reviewers. His films were considered unimportant (because they revolve around female and domestic issues), banal (because of their focus on larger-than-life feelings) and unrealistic (because of their conspicuous style).

This dismissal of Sirk's films changed drastically in the 1970s when his work was re-examined by British and French critics. From around 1970 there was a considerable interest among academic film scholars for Sirk's work - especially his American melodramas. Often centering on the formerly criticized style, his films were now seen as masterpieces of irony. The plots of the films were no longer taken at face value, and the analyses instead found that the films really criticized American society underneath the banal surface plot. The criticism of the 1970s and early 1980s was dominated by an ideological take on Sirk's work, gradually changing from being Marxist-inspired in the early 1970s to being focused on gender and sexuality in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Sirk's reputation was also helped by a widespread nostalgia for old-fashioned Hollywood films in the 1970's.^[1] His work is now widely considered to show excellent control of the visuals, extending from lighting and framing to costumes and sets that are saturated with symbolism and shot through with subtle barbs of irony.

Sirk's films have also been praised and quoted in films by directors such as Rainer Fassbinder and, later on, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes and Lars von Trier.

• April, April! (1935)
• Das Mädchen vom Moorhof (1935)
• Schlußakkord (1936)
• Zu neuen Ufern (1937)
• La Habanera (1937)
• Boefje (1939)
• Hitler's Madman (1943)
• A Scandal in Paris (1946)
• Shockproof (1949)
• No Room for the Groom (1952)
• Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)
• All I Desire (1953)
• Meet Me at the Fair(1953)
• Magnificent Obsession (1954)
• All That Heaven Allows (1955)
• Written on the Wind (1956)
• Interlude (1957)
• Battle Hymn (1957)
• The Tarnished Angels (1958)
• Imitation of Life (1959), his last U.S. film
• Sprich zu mir wie der Regen (1975)

• Far from Heaven directed by Todd Haynes was largely inspired by Sirk's work--especially All That Heaven Allows.

• John Waters' 1981 film Polyester, was, according to Waters, informed by Sirk's Universal melodramas.^{[citation needed]}

• Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf) transposes All That Heaven Allows into contemporary Germany, with Rock Hudson's Thoreau-esque man of the soil recast as a Moroccan "guest worker".

• Out There in the Dark, the 2006 novel by Wesley Strick, features a protagonist (Dieter Seiff) loosely based on Sirk.

Sirk is referenced as "Detlief Sierck" in the Gotrek & Felix novels by William King wherein he is a famous melodramatic playwright that Felix Jaeger often references.

• "This, anyhow, is what enchants me about Sirk: this delirious mixture of medieval and modern, sentimentality and subtlety, tame compositions and frenzied CinemaScope." - Jean-Luc Godard

1. ^ Klinger, Barbara: Melodrama and Meaning: history, culture, and the films of Douglas Sirk. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, USA, 1994

• Douglas Sirk Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Klinger, Barbara: Melodrama and Meaning: history, culture, and the films of Douglas Sirk. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, USA, 1994

• Douglas Sirk at the Internet Movie Database
• "Douglas Sirk", Dartmouth College course, "Exiles and Émigrés"
• "Douglas Sirk" Yahoo! Movies
• "Douglas Sirk" MSN Movies
• Austin Chronicle overview of Sirk's work and life
• Bright Lights Film Journal special on Sirk
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database