I've seen his whole filmography bar "April ,April" and his final German works,I've read his biography and Jon Halliday's "Sirk on Sirk " and yet ,I 've learned a lot of things in this masterful doc.
He was ignored for a long time ,but he was hailed by a new generation of German directors such as Fassbinder (whose " Angst essen Seele auf " was a remake of sorts of "all that heaven allows " ) ,American ones (Todd Haynes ,"far from Heaven") ,and French ones (Regis Warnier included extracts of "written on the wind" and "battle hymn" "in "une femme française" and François Ozon began "8 femmes " with a quotation of "all that Heaven allows") .Sirk's ultimate end was the severing line between popular melodrama and high art.
Told in the first person by the director who first had not a clue about who Sirk was ,the doc takes the form of an investigation ,first in Lugano,Switzerland where he died unnoticed (nobody in the neighborhood had heard of him ) ,then with notes found in the Swiss film archive where Sirk's legacy is kept : scribbled notes , not addressed to an imaginary reader ,but soul-searching , thoughts and ideas , written by himself or his second wife .
Much time is given over to Sirk 's tragedy ,which he kept secret till he eventually told it to Jon Hallidy who added a chapter in his book ; his divorce, his first wife who gave him away to the Gestapo;and his only son ,she was given the custody of : the boy became part of Hitler Youth and a child star in Nazi propaganda movies ( extracts of the unfortunate Junge are included ) and was killed in action on the Russian front .It spawned two masterpieces :"la Habanera " which dealt with the drama of a mother and the film many consider Sirk's apex "a time to love and a time to die" in which Sirk's son is represented by a very young soldier,almost a child ,who resembles Sirk's own son ,in the famous scene when John Gavin gets into the train which will take him back to the front hell.
With numerous interventions(archives or not) by Halliday ,Haynes, Fassbinder ,actors Rock Hudson the director almost considered a son of sorts and Hanna Schygulla ,this is a must for Detlef Sierck's aka Douglas Sirk's fans ,a man with no descendants who left a cinema treasure to the world.
He was ignored for a long time ,but he was hailed by a new generation of German directors such as Fassbinder (whose " Angst essen Seele auf " was a remake of sorts of "all that heaven allows " ) ,American ones (Todd Haynes ,"far from Heaven") ,and French ones (Regis Warnier included extracts of "written on the wind" and "battle hymn" "in "une femme française" and François Ozon began "8 femmes " with a quotation of "all that Heaven allows") .Sirk's ultimate end was the severing line between popular melodrama and high art.
Told in the first person by the director who first had not a clue about who Sirk was ,the doc takes the form of an investigation ,first in Lugano,Switzerland where he died unnoticed (nobody in the neighborhood had heard of him ) ,then with notes found in the Swiss film archive where Sirk's legacy is kept : scribbled notes , not addressed to an imaginary reader ,but soul-searching , thoughts and ideas , written by himself or his second wife .
Much time is given over to Sirk 's tragedy ,which he kept secret till he eventually told it to Jon Hallidy who added a chapter in his book ; his divorce, his first wife who gave him away to the Gestapo;and his only son ,she was given the custody of : the boy became part of Hitler Youth and a child star in Nazi propaganda movies ( extracts of the unfortunate Junge are included ) and was killed in action on the Russian front .It spawned two masterpieces :"la Habanera " which dealt with the drama of a mother and the film many consider Sirk's apex "a time to love and a time to die" in which Sirk's son is represented by a very young soldier,almost a child ,who resembles Sirk's own son ,in the famous scene when John Gavin gets into the train which will take him back to the front hell.
With numerous interventions(archives or not) by Halliday ,Haynes, Fassbinder ,actors Rock Hudson the director almost considered a son of sorts and Hanna Schygulla ,this is a must for Detlef Sierck's aka Douglas Sirk's fans ,a man with no descendants who left a cinema treasure to the world.
