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Zusatztext In this wonderfully provocative study, Robert Pippin explores three of Sirk’s most famous American melodramas, finding in their excesses and irony a philosophical rigour. Ingeniously, Pippin explains how Sirk’s sumptuously pessimistic world forecloses, for the characters, any real possibility of love, mutuality and self-knowledge, despite the putative happy endings. For viewers willing to give Sirk’s films a “second” or “third thought”, however, Pippin teaches us to see past the surface of bourgeois morality and discover a more difficult but worthwhile reckoning with “the politics of American emotional life” and our own complicities with its sympathetic registers. Informationen zum Autor Robert B. Pippin Klappentext 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. Vorwort An exploration of mid-century filmmaker Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) as a subversive, morally complex auteur with real contemporary relevance. Zusammenfassung 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. Inhaltsverzeichnis preface acknowledgements Chapter One. Introduction: Irony as Subversion Chapter Two. Love and Class in All That Heaven Allows Chapter Three. Misplaced Moralism in Written on the Wind Chapter Four. Living Theater in Imitation of Life Conclusion bibliography index ...
