Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk's subject, in his own words, was the drama of swollen emotions. He was born in Germany and left the country after a short and reluctant period at the Nazi-controlled UFA. The melodramas he made in Hollywood in the fifties come close to opera. Magnificent Obsession settled his full Technicolor palette; in All That Heaven Allows, made with the same performers, Cary Scott, a discontented widow in the provinces, falls in love with her young gardener Ron Kirby. Imitation of Life is openly a study of race relations in America, and Written on the Wind shows the Freudian collapse of an oil-rich Texan family with a sharp elegance. John Waters, David Lynch, Almodovar and Fassbinder all counted him among their chief influences.