Barbara Stanwyck in All I Desire (1953)
Barbara Stanwyck in All I Desire (1953)
All I Desire (1953)

The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present

All I Desire

Introduction by author Tom Ryan

Douglas Sirk | USA | 1953 | Unclassified (15+)
Film

This event has ended and tickets are no longer available.

When

Wed 24 Aug 2022

At the behest of her daughter – who has taken a lead role in the final-year high-school play – a fading vaudeville artist returns to visit the family she abandoned before pursuing her ultimately lacklustre stage career. Sirk brilliantly deploys stark black-and-white compositions and sweeping camera movements to precisely register a vivid small-town American milieu, compelling this simple family melodrama toward its heavy and moving climax. Featuring a characteristically sharp and bold lead performance by Barbara Stanwyck.

To be introduced by Tom Ryan, author of The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions (2019).

Format: 35mm
Language: English
Source: Universal
Runtime: 80 mins

Event duration

80 mins

Rating

Unclassified (15+)

Where

Cinema 1, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

Membership options

Mini membership
(3 consecutive weeks)
$27–$32

Annual memberships
$153–295

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Also screening on Wed 24 August

About the program

Best known as the director of a string of lavish Hollywood melodramas made for Universal Pictures in the 1950s, Douglas Sirk’s (1897–1987) feature-film career spanned almost 40 films between 1935 and 1959. He was a successful theatre director in Weimar Germany prior to transferring his passion and critical eye to the silver screen, moving from Nazi Germany to the United States in the late 1930s.

Read the full program notes
Douglas Sirk headshot

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About Melbourne Cinémathèque

Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.

Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven. 

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