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Douglas Sirk
Filmmaker and Philosopher
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Book Presentation:
It would be easy to dismiss the films of Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) as brilliant examples of mid-century melodrama with little to say to the contemporary world. Yet Robert Pippin argues that, far from being marginal pieces of sentimentality, Sirk's films are rich with irony, insight and depth. Indeed Sirk's films, often celebrated as classics of the genre, are attempts to subvert rather than conform to rules of conventional melodrama.
The visual style, story and characters of films like All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life are explored to argue for Sirk as an incredibly nuanced moral thinker. Instead of imposing moralising judgements on his characters, Sirk presents them as people who do 'wrong' things often without understanding why or how, creating a complex and unsettling ethics. Pippin argues that it this moral ambiguity and ironic richness enables Sirk to produce films that grapple with important themes such as race, class and gender with real force and political urgency.
Douglas Sirk: Filmmaker and Philosopher argues for a filmmaker who was a 'disruptive not restorative' auteur and one who broke the rules in the most interesting and subtle of ways.
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Publishing
See the complete filmography of Douglas Sirk on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
The Philosophical Hitchcock (2019)
Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness
Fatalism in American Film Noir (2013)
Some Cinematic Philosophy
Hollywood Westerns and American Myth (2012)
The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy
> On a related topic:
The Films of Douglas Sirk (2019)
Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions
by Tom Ryan
Subject: Director > Douglas Sirk
Sirk on Sirk (1997)
Conversations with Jon Halliday
by Douglas Sirk and Jon Halliday
Subject: Director > Douglas Sirk
Melodrama and Meaning (1994)
History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk
Imitation of Life (1991)
Douglas Sirk, Director
Dir. Lucy Fischer
Subject: One Film > Imitation of Life
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