Written On The Wind (1956) Finally, a movie that
dramatizes the shame of being a rich alcoholic guy with a low sperm count.
Hollywood knows through years of secret research that us dirtbags in the
heartland love nothing more than to see wealthy families run through the gamut
of humiliating situations. So it is that we have seen wealthy families in such
films as Holiday , Jane Eyre, Mrs. Parkington , The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Carpetbaggers tormented by various set backs, mental illness, and frequent bouts of intense
brooding. In fact, we know that being rich like those folks is so horrible
that they have to pay the actors playing them top dollar just to take on the
roles. And don't think America doesn't appreciate your sacrifice George
Peppard!
Written On The Wind is another one of these movies, complete with rich loser who can't measure up
to his rich daddy, a tumble down a very big staircase, and a miscarriage. But
this particular movie is actually much, much more as evidenced by the fact that
it came out on the Criterion DVD label which means that the movie has that
"important work of art" stamp on it. I can only guess that the movie then is
an indictment of post-war America (every "important work of art" movie made
after WWII automatically becomes an indictment of post-war America) and our
preoccupation with making gaudy Technicolor soap operas with Rock Hudson. The
Rock and director Douglas Sirk previously teamed up for similar projects in All That Heaven Allows and Magnificent Obsession which enables self-important types to examine the Sirk-Rock subgenre of
melodrama for reflections of our on foibles. Me? I'm still trying to figure
out what is about Technicolor that made stars Lauren Bacall and Dorothy Malone
look super tan and really long in the tooth. So who are the rich losers this time and what sort of business have they made
all their soul-corrupting millions in? Well, the name is Hadley and the
business is oil, son. You know, black gold, Texas Tea. The small Texas town
they inhabit shares their name and the Hadleys pretty much run the show down
there. And what a show it is! First of all, you've got daddy Hadley (if this
movie were perfect he'd be called Big Daddy), who tries in vain to keep his
kids in line while trying to run his oil business. Jasper is an old, used up
man, living with the disappointment of messed up kids that generally leave a
parent feeling like God was evening up the cosmic score by giving them wealth
on the one hand and a mutant baby on the other. You can tell by Jasper's
haunted look that he realizes he's surrounded not by loving children, but by
emotionally retarded offspring, whose constant bad behavior merely throws up in
his face his utter failure as a parent and that he's not long for this world.
Besides, you've got the Rock, Bacall, Malone, and Robert Stack in the cast!
There's no room for an old coot who's worried about how much deeper to dig the
next oil well!  Jasper has a son played by Robert Stack. His name is Kyle and he has a passel
of issues that manifest themselves in highly dramatic ways. He's a drinker who
sleeps with a gun under his pillow. He hates himself for never being able to
please his father. He hates his father because he always feels like Jasper
liked his best friend Mitch better. And he hates his best friend Mitch because
Mitch is more stable and had a regular old loving father. (We know that Mitch's
dad is one of those solid salt of the Earth types because he goes hunting with
Mitch and is always asking Mitch if he needs to talk about what's on his mind).
In addition to these standard issue issues, Kyle's gun while not exactly
shooting blanks, isn't exactly fully loaded with buckshot either. You can
imagine what that does to a fellow who already feels like a worthless piece of
crap. But I'm sure the booze will make him feel better and think rationally
about the problem. And the gun fetish should take his mind off things as well.
Jasper though doesn't only have his time bomb of a son giving him Frisbees in
the dry Texas heat. His other kid, Marylee (Malone) is acting out in her own
way and causes him more trouble while he's alive than Kyle does (Kyle at least
respects his dad enough that he waits to melt down until after Jasper croaks).
Marylee is what we in the biz call a "good time girl." Some other phrases that
those of you with less manners than I might hang on her are slut, tramp,
trollop, harlot, skank, hussy, hoochie, and roadwhore. The medically
recognized term is nymphomaniac (that's the term they use on the back of the
DVD case what with Criterion being a classy outfit and all). Marylee throws
herself at every guy in town and this usually results in Mitch and Kyle getting
a phone call from the barkeep to come down and get her before she hooks up with
some barfly. But it isn't really all these losers she wants, but Mitch. So who is this Mitch and what's so danged great about him that Jasper wishes he
was his son, that Kyle resents him for being an all-American man, and that
Marylee lets herself get laid more times than reusable bathroom tile just to
get his attention? He's the Rock. If I have to tell you anymore than that,
then you need to hit your local video store and tell them to give you all the
Hudson they have in stock, because once you get a gander at the square jaw and
perfect hair, you'll realize that skinny guys with wavy hair like Robert Stack
will always be known as that guy that hosted Unsolved Mysteries and appeared in a "Rock Hudson movie."  Rock plays Mitch Wayne, a geologist for Hadley oil (Rock as a geologist! These
movies sure had a certain flair, didn't they?) who is a decent, smart guy. He
grew up with Kyle and Marylee and Jasper wants Mitch to marry Marylee, but
Mitch only loves her like a sister (remember though that was just the Rock's
character. Off screen, you can bet that Rock probably wanted her in the worst
way, what with him being the Rock and all.). Kyle, for his part, may not have
much motion in his ocean, if you catch my meaning, but even his sperm-depleted
body knows that his dad thinks Mitch is great and that Kyle sucks. But that's
okay, because Kyle thinks that Mitch's dad is great and that Jasper is the
sucky one! And wading into this Texas-sized mess is Lauren Bacall as an
executive secretary at some magazine. Her name is Lucy and Mitch falls
instantly in love with her.
Even though Mitch is a great guy and looks like Rock Hudson, Lucy ends up
marrying Kyle. This made little sense to me since Lucy knew Kyle all of about
two days and what she knew of him was that he was a rather insincere, smooth
talking operator who liked to throw his money around in an effort to impress
women. Maybe Lucy didn't need to know anything about Kyle beyond the fact that
he liked to spend money on her, but why then was Mitch in love with her? Being
a good guy, he surely wouldn't have taken a shine to her if he knew she was
that shallow, would he? That's really the problem with a movie like this.
You've got to set up a love triangle, but if one of the guys is great and one
of them is a nutter, how do you make it so that the woman picks the nutter over
the good guy and not make her look like a moron? Luckily for us, the movie
isn't all that interested in fleshing out Lucy's character, so we don't have to
wonder about her motivations. We can just pretend she was there as a catalyst
for all the seething hate and feelings of inferiority of both Kyle and Marylee
to come to the surface. Early on in their marriage, Kyle cleans up his act by not drinking and losing
his interest in firearms. Marylee meanwhile continues to slut around and ends
up causing Jasper to stroke out on the staircase and execute a pretty good
looking tumble down them where he promptly croaks. Mitch is depressed because
the woman he loves is unavailable and contemplates running away to Iran! Those
were such simpler times, when a love sick guy could dream of running away to
the middle east! Heck, now all he'd have to do is enlist.  Things start to come apart though once Kyle gets the news from the doctor that
he's a little low on his man juice and he does what any self-respecting
half-man would do - BENDER! He also allows himself to be manipulated by the
insanely jealous Marylee into believing that Mitch and Lucy are having an
affair, a belief only exacerbated when Lucy tells him that even though he's
kind of iffy in the bedroom, she's white-trash fertile and pregnant anyway!
Kyle believes this to be Mitch's baby and goes insane. Without revealing
anything you haven't already guessed, this is the sort of movie that ends with
an inquest. All these old time movies where people have miscarriages, fall
down stairs, and struggle over guns have at least one inquest scene. It's in
the contract.
If you're familiar with All That Heaven Allows, then whether you'll find this one worth you time an easy call to make. You
know how it works: Rock Hudson is the hunky Everyman you root for to triumph
over various plot twists straight out of Days Of Our Lives. Every scene is played up with exaggerated emotion and import (movies like
this have no time for subtlety - not when you need to move straightaway to the
next crisis) and sometimes the characters suffer, seemingly only pieces to be
moved through one situation to the next (like with Lucy in this film). On the
other hand, these movies are gorgeous to look at (it's the kind of movie where
leaves blow all around inside the beautifully polished mansion and where
everybody drives brightly colored sports cars) and stocked with big time actors
who don't have any problems wringing as much as humanly possibly from the
overheated script. (Both Stack and Malone were nominated for Oscars in this
and Malone actually won.) If lush, old style soap operas with bona fide movie
stars are your bag, this one's for you. I know I never turn down a chance to
see guys with low sperm counts go on a rampage.
|