Bob Merrick, a spoiled rich man, has a crash while speeding on his speedboat on a lake, but is saved thanks to a resuscitator brough from the home of Dr. Phillips. However, just then Dr. Phillips has a heart attack, and since the resuscitator was not there, he dies. Bob feels sorry for Phillips' widow, Helen. Bob meets a painter, Edward, who tells him that Dr. Phillips persuaded him to achieve his full potentials by simply helping others without asking anything in return. Bob wants to help Helen, but she runs away from him and is hit by a car, and becomes blind. Bob pretends he is Robinson in front of a blind Helen, and sends her to a Swiss city for an eye surgery, but the doctors refuse since there are no prospects for healing her. Bob finally reveals who he is in front of Helen and proposes her, but she leaves without saying where. Years later, Bob graduated medicine and became a brain surgeon. He hears info that Helen is in a hospital, possibly dying from a brain clot, so he operates her himself. She awakens and sees some light, will Bob promises to never abandon her.
It is remarkable that German director Douglas Sirk achieved all his major American successes within only five years in the second half of the 1 9 5 0s before retirement, and that he found his winning formula in melodramas that walk a thin line between a soap opera and art. "Magnificent Obssession" was his first hit, but it is, unfortunately, definitely on the soap opera side of that line, and feels terribly dated today. Sirk has a fine sense for honest emotions and understanding of his characters, refusing to be cynical or mock them, but some plot points would be ridiculous even for the standards of Mexican telenovelas. There is pain, loss, struggles and sensational obstacles, but everything is just so exaggerated that it becomes unintentionally comical at times, especially due to banal dialogue. Here are there some virtues show up, like the comical wisecracks of a little girl who interacts with a blind Helen or the noble messages about philanthropy that is therapeutic for the main protagonst Bob, who undergoes a character arc from a spoiled rich man to a humble, kind, patient doctor. But they cannot lift the movie out of its cliches, especially the accident that leaves Helen blind, or just the notion that Bob actually ruins her entire life just by simply being there around the area. The finale is expressionistic because it is the only instance where huge close-ups of Rock Hudson's and Jane Wyman's faces are shown, breaking the previous medium shots up to that point, but otherwise, it simply does not stimulate that much.
Grade:+
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