New York. Kyle, an alcoholic millionaire whose father Jasper is a Texas oil tycoon, meets secretary Lucy in a bar, who was there with Mitch, Kyle's friend. Spontaneously, Kyle invites her to his private plane and flies her off to Miami. Even though she is reluctant at first, Lucy eventually marries Kyle. Jasper tries to persuade Mitch to marry Jasper's daughter, Marylee, but Mitch is secretly in love with Lucy. Kyle is devastated when the doctor tells him he might never have children due to low fertility. Marylee is arrested for massively picking up men on the street, which devastates Jasper who dies. When Lucy reveals she is pregnant, Kyle incorrectly assumes she cheated on him with Mitch. Kyle takes a gun to shoot Mitch, though in the struggle with Marylee shoots himself.
The director Douglas Sirk always walked on a thin line between a soap opera and an art film, which is why he is today met with mixed reaction, depending on the taste of the each viewer. One of his most famous films, "Written on the Wind", is a lush and unapologetically thoroughbred melodrama— sometimes even too much for its own good—combining themes of alcoholism, forbidden love triangle, jealousy and torment hidden behind a perfect facade of the rich, yet it has enough virtues to still seem relevant. Sirk wrote one of the best roles in the career of actor Robert Stack, who plays the alcoholic Kyle with a lot of emotion: he acts tough and extroverted, trying to impress Lucy by flying her to Miami in his private plane, but then reveals his fragile side and simply honestly asks her for a relationship in a genuine monologue later on: "I think seriously about all the things I used to laugh at. Like having a wife, and a home, kids." Stack was always a charismatic actor, and when given enough room, he could show how versatile he is. Surprisingly, the main protagonist Mitch (Rock Hudson) fares much less, since his role in paler in comparison. He is secretly in love with Lucy, yet the movie is never as inspired in his presence as it is during Kyle's screen time. Dorothy Malone plays an interesting character, Kyle's nymphomaniac sister Marylee: one guy who met her on the street is brought to Jasper and admits that "nobody picks her up, it's always the other way around". However, even her part is not that integral to the mail love triangle involving Kyle, Lucy and Mitch, and she thus sometimes feels like a "fifth wheel". The film loses a part of its sophistication and subtlety later on, revealing too much of the banal melodrama, yet still serves as an subversive commentary on the society which was not that ideal as it always seemed.
Grade:++
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