I watched MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION yesterday, for the first time in a few years, as I worked my way through the Douglas Sirk Box Set.
Like all of Sirk's Hollywood movies, there's a lot more going on in the movie than there appears to be. That said, MO is probably the director's most eventful film. Where his other pictures concentrate on the dramatic psychological conflict between characters, this one has loads of life-altering events. Within the first reel, the male lead Bob Merrick is in an accident that takes him to death's door. And the female lead's husband dies of heart attack. A short while later the female lead, Helen Phillips (Jane Wyman) is involved in an accident that robs her of her sight. Ladle on top of this Sirk's sumptuous technicolor design schemes and all this melodrama might have seemed a bit contrived (you think?), it it hadn't been for the philosophical glue that Sirk binds it all together with.
In MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, the doctrine espoused is reminiscent of Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret", and is so important to the story that the film derives its title from the unnamed philosophy that is referred to by its "prophet", Edward Randolph (Otto Krueger), as "a magnificent obsession". Yet Sirk wisely leaves the details in the background. We never really get the full picture of how the philosophy works, but this is how Sirk keeps the whole thing from becoming preachy.
Sirk himself claimed in an interview on BBC TV that he was more interested in the "circle of life" angle ... Dr Phillips dies so that Bob Merrick can live and carry on his good works for him. But whatever the director's intentions, what we ended up with was a superior romantic melodrama with a strong underlying sub-text that says, Give with no thought of receiving and the world will be a better place.
No argument from me ...
Like all of Sirk's Hollywood movies, there's a lot more going on in the movie than there appears to be. That said, MO is probably the director's most eventful film. Where his other pictures concentrate on the dramatic psychological conflict between characters, this one has loads of life-altering events. Within the first reel, the male lead Bob Merrick is in an accident that takes him to death's door. And the female lead's husband dies of heart attack. A short while later the female lead, Helen Phillips (Jane Wyman) is involved in an accident that robs her of her sight. Ladle on top of this Sirk's sumptuous technicolor design schemes and all this melodrama might have seemed a bit contrived (you think?), it it hadn't been for the philosophical glue that Sirk binds it all together with.
In MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, the doctrine espoused is reminiscent of Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret", and is so important to the story that the film derives its title from the unnamed philosophy that is referred to by its "prophet", Edward Randolph (Otto Krueger), as "a magnificent obsession". Yet Sirk wisely leaves the details in the background. We never really get the full picture of how the philosophy works, but this is how Sirk keeps the whole thing from becoming preachy.
Sirk himself claimed in an interview on BBC TV that he was more interested in the "circle of life" angle ... Dr Phillips dies so that Bob Merrick can live and carry on his good works for him. But whatever the director's intentions, what we ended up with was a superior romantic melodrama with a strong underlying sub-text that says, Give with no thought of receiving and the world will be a better place.
No argument from me ...