When
Wed 7 Sep 2022
Sam Fuller and Helen Deutsch’s script follows an idealistic parole officer (Cornel Wilde) who falls for one of his charges (Patricia Knight), a 'femme fatale' who wants to be a good girl – but society, and her past, just won’t let her. Sirk’s lurid melodrama teeters precariously between noir and something less readily classifiable. Undeservedly neglected, its deceptively trashy, tabloid surface mirrors the easy dismissal that the heroine suffers in the film. Charles Lawton Jr.’s meticulously framed images inspired a series of iconic works by British pop artist Richard Hamilton.
Also screening on Wed 7 September
Program
"Life's parade at your fingertips": Douglas Sirk
All I Desire (1953) – Wed 24 Aug, 7pm
Imitation of Life (1959) – Wed 24 Aug, 8.45pm
All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Wed 31 Aug, 7pm
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) – Wed 31 Aug, 8.40pm
Shockproof (1949) – Wed 7 Sept, 6.30pm
April, April! (1935) – Wed 7 Sept, 8pm
Boefje (1939) – Wed 7 Sept, 9.35pm
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.
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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.
