Magnificent Obsession

source: Magnificent Obsession

How to sum up this expensive soap opera? If you can sit through it without either falling asleep or laughing, you're the kind of person who needn't ask for an anaesthetic before your next root canal. I mean -- there is such a thing as going too far, and they have gone it. The photography is splendid -- Big Bear and Arrowhead Lake -- in glorious 1950s Technicolor overreach. The lighting is flat, as it was in the television productions of the period, such as "I Love Lucy." The acting is magnificently abominable. Rock Hundson as a reckless multi-millionaire who believes that, if there is trouble, writing a check for a large amount will make it go away, simply doesn't do the job. He's very handsome at the beginning as a self-testing speedboat racer but was unconvincing. Then, having grievously wounded Jane Wyman, he suffers an unanticipated road to Damascus experience. His reformed playboy is even worse. Nobody stands out. Otto Kruger is always reliable, whether a suave villain or, as here, an understanding and tolerant mentor to Hudson's emotional life. However, he's knee-capped by a stereotypical part -- the sensitive non-materialistic artist -- and it thereby turned into a figure with the animation of a statue in Disneyland's animatronic Hall of Presidents. Maybe Calvin Cooledge. The music is full of heavenly choirs, a sure sign that democracy is failing. The nobility of Beethoven's Ninth, already overused, is mutilated by a thousand and one throbbing vocal chords. I realize Douglas Sirk directed this and that he has a cult following. I don't know why.

This movie was pretty bad, i didn't buy hardly anything that happend, it all seemed so far-fetched, like Rock Hudson all of a sudden becoming a doctor, and a lot of other stuff too. Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman are only OK but were better in all that heaven allows. Watch All that heaven allows or written on the wind instead.

Magnificent Obsession is an overly melodramatic soap opera blessed with some good actors who cannot rise above the script. If you listen to this movie without watching the picture, it is easy to hear the horrible music, the overly dramatic phrasing, and the silly dialogue. Everything is just too earnest. What really makes this film as loser though is the premise upon which the story is constructed--that everyone has a destiny. And that you cannot fulfill that destiny unless you help others without acknowledgement. Helping others without extracting credit for it is a noble aim. Everyone should aspire to it. But by saying that you will get what you want via your destiny if you follow this noble path, it undercuts the message, by rewarding the giver. Also, the concept of destiny, as expressed in Christian terms in the film, is nothing more than mumbo jumbo. Too bad they didn't advocate giving for the sake of doing something nice for someone. Or solely because it is the right thing to do. For those who think of Rock Hudson only in terms of his partnerships with Doris Day, a film like Magnificent Obsession might be an eye opener. But he played plenty of meatier roles with better scripts, e.g. Giant.

Douglas Sirk is known as the melodrama man,but all his movies are not exactly what we call melodrama:"All that heaven allows" and"tarnished angels" are closer to realist stories;"A time to love and a time to die" transcends melodrama to become a tragedy.Three major movies seem to belong to the genre:"written on the wind" "imitation of life " and of course this one."Magnificent obsession " has a plot so unlikely,so incredible that,in the hands of a lesser talent,it would have gathered nothing but horse -laugh:The beginning of the film is a succession of coincidences and combinations of circumstances so improbable you wonder whether Sirk will get away with it.Against all odds,he succeeds in this absurd task.Someone tells the hero that the one who devotes his life to others has chosen the rocky road,someone has been crucified for that.But once he has begun,this task will obsess him,and it's a magnificent obsession.So the selfish hero will undo the harm he's done . It's a double feat:Hudson's struggle is moving and Sirk ,who goes for broke,pulls off this extravaganza with panache.

dated soap opera with every cliché in the book works best as a look at good production values of the time along with period furnishings, clothes and women's perms; but even if you can stand the plot ploys there are some colossal flaws; one, wyman is a stick, unattractive, prissy, and generally a drip; yet rock falls for her- and wants to date her in the car before she has her accident and he becomes obsessed with guilt; two, he was not responsible for wyman's husband's death; he didn't ask for a respirator, know they had only one, or that someone else might be needing it; three; he didn't cause her accident; he was trying to offer money for the hospital and befriend the cold stick when she bolted out the other door into traffic; four; she could be his mom, and he goes from glamorous girls in the bar to her, again, before he even knows who she is; five, wastrel drunk playboy rock becomes a great doctor; rock, a brain surgeon?; but there is nothing the actors can do about the story; poor agnes moorehead, a firebrand, reduced to head shots with a slight turn and wistful look- no agnes, more wistful than that; it's just dreadful, with score to match

In a Spinal Tap moment Sirk said "This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art." Well its almost Hegel, its so incomprehensible. This movie deserves a 1 or a 10, anything in the middle in not fair. It's either the worst sickly idiotic spiritualist romantic schlock; or genuine art. No. the latter is too ridiculous an indefensible with this nonsense which causes dangerous convulsions with its clichés. Sirk deserved better and he was a true intellectual, but its impossible to defend this banal drivel. And why are the male characters in these movies - and Sirk's in particular - such neutered boards of 4X2 who whisper in low comforting tones?

Daft potboilers don't come much dafter than this, but it's a Douglas Sirk movie which makes everything alright. Except in this case it doesn't. Based on a sanctimonious novel by the sanctimonious Lloyd C Douglas, (he wrote "The Robe"), and already filmed in 1935 with Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor, it's got more uplift than a cantilever bra. Rock Hudson is the arrogant playboy who not only feels responsible for making Jane Wyman a widow but later is directly responsible for the accident in which she loses her sight. To make amends he takes up medicine, becomes a great eye surgeon and restores it. (No, it sin't quite that daft; he had planned to become a doctor before becoming an arrogant playboy). In between times, they fall in love. Try as I might I can't quite find the redeeming social commentary and critique of American mores that are supposed to lie just below the surface of Sirk's films, (this one isn't too deep). On the plus side Rock Hudson isn't half bad, (I think I am rediscovering him), and, of course, it looks great, (in Sirk's films people live in rooms the size of cathedrals). Nothing in this film matches the best of his later work and even in soap-opera terms this is definitely daytime TV.

I saw this at my in-laws' house one night when it popped up on TV and my mother-in-law said it was one of her favorite movies. Well, she can have it. Look, I can enjoy a chick flick now and then, as long as it's good. But this one's extra-sappy, unrealistic, and just plain predictable, despite some decent performances from Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. It's uncanny how quickly a woman can accept having her eyesight taken away from her. Oh well, they say love is blind... The neat and tidy happy little ending nearly made me gag, too. And how often did we need Otto Kruger repeating the title? It happened not once, not twice, but THREE times! * out of ****

Predictably glossy (and shallow) Douglas Sirk remake of the 1935 film about a carefree playboy and a stolid widow brought together by chance and separated by tragedy--can he overcome the odds and make a happy ending for them both? Overblown romance elongated by foolishness, and everyone acting childishly. It's occasionally laughable yet nearly salvaged by a super-slick 1950s production-design that reeks of money. Performances by Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson (reunited the next year for Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows") are tolerable but do not set off cinematic sparks. A sudser for female audiences of the time, this now looks rather silly. ** from ****