The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk

Mark Rappaport returns to the world of Douglas Sirk, a filmmaker whose work he previously mined in Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992). After briefly surveying the use of mirrors and “vanity tables” in the films of Max Ophuls and Vincente Minnelli, Rappaport rightly claims Sirk as the “poet laureate” of the form. Exploring the ways in which these objects are used to capture and imprison the images, memories and lives of their female characters, Rappaport’s short video essay provides a profound itemisation of the material traps of the Hollywood melodrama.