Foibles: A Mother-daughter Podcast

Douglas Sirk (1897 - 1987) - All That Heaven Allows (1955) Sirk was a Dane born in Germany and became very successful in Germany as a theater director. His 1st wife joined the Nazi Party. He left Germany primarily because of the danger the rise of the Nazi Party created for his 2nd wife who was a Jew.  The core and substance of Sirk’s oeuvre was created in Hollywood in the 1950’s in so-called women’s films. Sirk’s greatest works depicted social constraints from the woman’s point of view and offered full-bodied characters to his female stars. Sirk uses sweeping music, vivid technicolor, and lush scenery in opposition to emotional suppression and the heavy hand of systemic oppression. He hides his true anti-fascist message behind the tissue-thin glamor of Hollywood.    At the time of their release, Sirk’s movies were critically sneered at for their swollen emotions and woman-centric themes. It was, per usual, the French New Wave directors and Cahiers du Cinema who embraced, lauded, and raised to the pantheo