gregfor a long time the book "#sirk on sirk" was a kind of bible for me. i loved his movies so much, colorful and intensely felt melodramas that were disparaged as "women's pictures" in the early 50s. but then near the 80s he had a renaissance. critics all over were praisingly pointing out the "class subversion" and irony they saw in his movies. the "women's picture," they said, was a clever way for him to subvert norms of suburbia and american life, etc.
they said he wasn't serious with the "hysterical" melodrama in his films, that this was just a lowbrow vehicle to get to a destination. but i had my tears and that book that i stole from the library, composed solely of interviews with him, saying things like "i would have made 'imitation of life' from the title alone" and "even life is removed from you.. when your fingers try to reach and touch something it is only glass, and a reflection. it's hopeless."
yes, clearly here we have an emotionless and calculating man who made these movies for an emotionless and calculating end, more interested in a room's rug being perfect than the pain of a character. the amount to which the "calculative," misogynist and phallogocentric position of the average film critic went to deny that sirk really identified with these so-called "women's pictures" are what caused me to reject academic art criticism altogether.
this will soon lead into another, much longer post about the tyranny of masculine, calculative films. directors dead, emotionless, and devoid of any pathos or value like kubrick, but this will have to come later.