Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 15, 2002)
november 15.2002* jHflt M Ü 2 7 Meet Douglas Sirk The films that inspired Far from Heaven t’s impossible not to acknowledge the per- vasive influence of the films of Douglas Sirk on Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven. From the blinding Technicolor and the heightened, expressionistic melodramatics to the too-formal acting style and sweeping orchestral score, much of the latter is almost interchangeable with the former. Even Haynes’ title, a reference to Sirk’s 1955 film Ali That Hea\<en Allows, is a sly play on the similarities— and differences— between the two movies. I Sirk was a Danish expatriate who began his great piece of queer cinema— was made obvi career as a rigorous intellectual within 1930s ous in the extremely Sirkian visual aesthetic of German theater, directing such projects as most of his work. Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Sirk’s well-cloaked mission— later shared in His Hollywood career began upon his early the ’60s and ’70s by women and racial and sex 1940s emigration. Like William Faulkner and ual minority artists and activists— was to sub Gore Vidal, he was a thoughtful, literate artist vert the idealized, suffocating notions of ’50s who found ways to subvert Hollywood’s strict I social morality. Martin Scorsese calls Sirk a ly controlled, assembly-line “creativity,” “smuggler” in A Personal Journey with Martin injecting style and strangeness into ordinary Scorsese Through American Movies: “Beneath projects he could easily have considered the surface of seemingly ideal settings lies a beneath him. Prominence came in the ’50s sharp indictment of American small-town life.” with his hugely successful “women’s pic Todd Haynes, who was exposed to Sirk in tures”— melodramas aimed at housewives college through Fassbinder’s fandom, uses All thirsting for glamour and passion. That Heaven Allows and Sirk’s most successful Though Sirk himself wasn't gay, his films film, 1959’s Imitation o f Life, as templates for are firmly entrenched in the canon of queer Far from Heaven. cinema. The most notable of them starred All That Heaven Allows stars Jane Rock Hudson as the Sensitive, Handsome Wyman— just divorced from Ronald Rea Leading Man and were guided by the hand of gan— as a widow who, like Julianne Moore in producer Ross Hunter, a gay man firmly Far from H eaven, falls in love with her garden opposed to cinematic realism. er to the vicious disapproval of her communi The Sirk obsession of gay German film ty. The visual elements of Haynes’ racial maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder— who wrote themes can be seen in Imitation o f Life, the and directed 1972 s astute, complex, socially story of the friendship between a showbiz star aware and riveting Fox and His Friends, a truly (Lana Turner), her black maid (Juanita P H O TO BY JEFF VESPA they’ve changed.... To have the guy who | one. In the same period of time [that] I neglected his family, overworked, come home, wrote Far from H eaven— which felt more tell his wife how much he loves her and show like a social time, like meeting people and us how he’s changed and grown. going to see bands, going out way more T he movies that this film comes out than I was doing in New York, taking of never do that. They are almost pre- beautiful little trips— I was also writing this psychological in that there’s not the sense other script and developing this other idea of a psychological subtext that the characters about Bob Dylan. eventually unearth and reveal. They don’t I got really into Bob Dylan again when I articulate what they learn, if they learn it at drove out here and started thinking about a all. T hey’re simply moved around by the film that would be a very experimental way forces of their society usually to a very disap of telling a life story, like refracted into sev pointing outcome. eral characters. He kind of gave us the So, in a weird way, the message or the approval to go ahead. I’ve never met him, interpretation of those events is left in your never even spoken to him, but he got the hands. It gives the audience somewhere to synopsis, and we’ve been dealing with his go, where you have to kind of think about manager. what happens. I’m eventually going to get into that pro ject, which I left in a rough, early form before CM: I’m sure it’s too early to ask you making Heaven. So, that little season in Port what your next project will be, but is it fair land is going to keep me busy for many years. to say we can always expect the unexpected Little did I know! from you? T H : Yes, you can expect that, at least. C hristopher M c Q uain is a Seattle free-lance But I can tell you a little bit about the next writer. Moore) and the racially divided fates of their children. All That Heaven Allows is available on video and DVD; Imitation o f Life is available on video, with a planned January DVD release. Anyone interested in the uniquely queer tra dition of which Far from H eaven is a part should see them. Their provocative visuals, strange artificiality and skeptical, eccentric humanity make for a galvanizing, gratifying experience. — CM jn From left: Julianne Moore, Todd Haynes, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert make for one heavenly film crew R o se C ity Swiunig- * Ho» Hilda y V a rie ty Show & Dance November 30,2002 • 8PM 618 SE Alder • $10 admission Featuring Poison Waters Advanced Tickets Gai-Pied: 2544 NE Broadway • (503) 331-1125 Stan Cass Rose City Gay Freedom Band (503) 790-2170 • www.rcgfb.org ^Sponsored by~ Bella Casa Realty, Inc. _ Celia lyon/Terri Popejoy 503 231-7355 - & Mortgage Market, Inc. SECT.*
