The Biggest erection in Cinematic history Or, how Douglas Sirk circumvented the law

Hollywood. 1943: A preview film theatre.

A German language film is being screened, and a middle aged man sits alone fixated by the flickering black and white images. Suddenly he sits up and shouts,

Stop. Rewind. freeze frame  

He gets up and goes close to the screen, where he lovingly caresses the image of a blonde haired young man in a nazi uniform. Tears are streaming down his face, as the image of the young man is superimposed on his face. Eventually, the frozen frame starts to disintegrate, and burn .

Fast Forward

Hollywood studio 1956

An older version of the above man is directing a key scene from the classic weepie ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. Posh widow Jane Wyman has had to give up her younger lover, gardener Rock Hudson, for the sake of her selfish teenage children.

Christmas Eve, and there’s a knock on the front door.

A man walks in with a large parcel that looks uncannily like, what used to be called a console television set. It’s a present from the ghastly children to their mother and they unexpectedly announce that this will be their last Christmas in the family home. News to mum who is framed in the television screen looking rather fearful.

                                             TELEVISION MAN

                       Merry Christmas, and a happy new year Mrs Scott.

                       All you have to do is turn that dial.

                       All the company you want.

                        Right there on the screen.

                        Drama, comedy.

                        Life’s parade at your fingertips.

No longer will Jane be a participant in life. All that’s left now, is for her. to be a lonesome spectator of television melodramas. Such a scene with its ambivalent meaning was to become the hallmark of the director Douglas Sirk.

Whilst Sirk was developing his directorial career in pre-war Germany, his wife was embracing the nazi doctrine. She enrolled their son in the Hitler Youth and his good looks quickly attracted attention from the nazi propaganda machine. Very soon he was a national film star playing the definitive Ayrian hero. Being of a totally different persuasion, Sirk had no option but to leave his homeland unaccompanied by his beloved son.

Hollywood beckoned but the only work he could get was at Universal working on melodramas for the millions of American housewives with sufficient time on their hands to attend matinees at their local cinema. Known in the trade as weepies, they were considered to be the lowest form of cinematic life. But the intellectual Sirk grabbed the opportunity and his success in the genre would eventually earn him the accolade, King of the Weepies.

Prior to ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS Sirk made MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION which had playboy Rock being responsible for Jane losing her sight in an accident. Seeing the error of his ways, so to speak, Rock trained as an eye surgeon in record time and then gave Jane her sight back after a state of the art operation. Fantastic you may think? But not quite as fantastic as Sirk’s life. With the advent of peace, the flow of nazi films to Hollywood dried up, which meant that he could no longer savour those bitter-sweet images of his son in that lonely film theatre. So at the height of his career he left Universal, and returned to Germany to start his filial search, which would prove to be fruitless, and eventually he had to accept that the happy ending which defines his work would not apply to his own real life melodrama.

And as for Jane and Rock? Yes of course they got back together again after Rock had an accident. Jane rushed to his side and her mere presence not only brought him out of his coma but also, it activated the biggest erection ever seen on the silver screen. Erection? 1950’s? But sex hadn’t been invented yet, and anyway there were laws against such apparitions, weren’t there? Mind you, that slow rising blanket could after all have been Rock’s knee, couldn’t it? But that doesn’t quite explain the stag in the garden sniffing around in the snow, now does it? Over to you Mr Freud for a quick gloss if you may.

You see Sirk was a bit of a wag and his low art melodramas can be seen as subversive critiques of American society. So all you widows out there, be warned of children bearing gifts this Christmas, particularly if one of the gifts is a console television set, circa 1956.

                               A Happy Sirkian Christmas to my reader(s)