Sirk on Sirk (Cinema One) [Hardcover]

Douglas Sirk (Author), Jon Halliday (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1972 | Series: Cinema One

Douglas Sirk is one of the most neglected directors in American cinema. This book aims to rectify that and, through a survey of his career, to re-establish Sirk as one of the great stylists of Hollywood cinema.

In 1937 Sirk left Germany, after a successful career in theatre and film, and came to Hollywood. From 1942 to 1958 he directed some 30 films, the most famous of which were a series of lush melodramas in the '50s, which were seen at the time as vehicles for stars such as Rock Hudson and Lana Turner. These films are now seen as perceptive dissections of the repressive conventions underlying American life, revealing a disintegrating society - a society of pretence and illusion, befogged by alcohol. Sirk's films are many-layered, the style transcending the melodrama and transforming the material into works of art.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd (January 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0436099241
• ISBN-13: 978-0436099243
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,872,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good insight into an important director, February 3, 2002

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Sirk on Sirk (Directors on Directors) (Paperback)

A series of interviews that Jon Halliday carried out with Sirk in his later years. The interviews are broken into six periods-- Sirk's German Theater period; the German film period; the exile years in Switzerland, France and Holland; his two American periods and finally the time after his biggest Hollywood successes.

Sirk is a tremendously important cinema director, and the interviews give a lot of clarity to his history and how he went about choosing the subject matter that he did. Halliday also provides a brief biographical introduction and a biofilmography and Sirk bibliography. A must-have for cinephiles and fans of Douglas Sirk.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A GOOD BOOK BUT IT NEEDS MORE ..., September 20, 2001

By 

L rodolfo molina B (GUATEMALA, GUATEMALA Guatemala) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sirk on Sirk (Directors on Directors) (Paperback)

The book is good, but I would have loved to have more in depth study. Perhaps some day the biography of this director will come

4.0 out of 5 stars Welcome Addition to the Literature, April 14, 2011

By 

Curtis T. Stotlar "cstotlar" (Milwaukee, WI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sirk on Sirk: interviews with Jon Halliday

The edition I have of this book dates from 1972. If it has been updated I'd like to know. Andrew Sarris was one of the first serious American film critics to bring attention to Douglas Sirk, a director who made movies that weren't supposed to be taken seriously.
Of course, the critical climate has changed substantially and those reviewers who were interested in Oscar over-acting or "message films" or plausibility were caught rather red-faced, I'd imagine.
I wish this book would have included more material about the later American films near the end of his career. That's when the real fun begins!

Curtis Stotlar