Written on the Wind

How many movies evoke the period in which they were made and yet still look both fresh and modern as well? This seems like one of the quintessential films of the '50s: a high-powered Texas oil-family drama, detailing the mis-matches between the spoiled and variously bent children of the family and the relatively 'normal' outsiders. Sirk plays it as a conspicuously fierce critique of a particular sector of American society, the disintegrating middle class, but one in which all the sympathy goes to the 'lost' children rather than to the straights. The acting is dynamite, the melodrama is compulsive, the photography, lighting, and design share a bold disregard for realism. It's not an old movie; it's a film for the future.