City | Nashville-Davidson, Tennessee, USA |
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Description | The most florid of Douglas Sirk’s peerless 1950s melodramas, this hothouse extravaganza of thwarted desire, stifled sexuality and rage expressed as acquisitionist hunger is one of the decade’s best. Rock Hudson is the true-blue-collar pal to spoiled oil-company heirs Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone, who pines for his rugged embrace; the introduction of the late Lauren Bacall into the mix tosses a match in the petrol. Sirk’s famous maxim that “there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art†was never demonstrated more forcefully: The heightening of every moment bulls past soap opera into something closer to the torrential passions of grand opera. His style isn’t subtle — this is where Airplane! cribbed the gag about a person posed exactly like the portrait behind them — but the shadings of torment in the performances (especially Stack’s) are remarkably nuanced. It’s not to be missed on the big screen, for Malone’s big freak-out number alone. JIM RIDLEY |
Date | Sunday Feb 01, 2015 |
Time | 8:00 AM - 2:00 PM |
Address | 2102 Belcourt Ave. |
Added on Sunday Jan 18, 2015 | |
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