Thinking in Technicolor: A Dilemma in Modern Film

In discussing the decline of quality in contemporary film, the conversation often focuses on easy targets such as remakes, sequels, and poor public taste.  Yet these complaints are by no means unique to the current cinematic climate.  The near complete lack of films featuring female protagonists by male directors in recent years indicates a far more disconcerting trend. Though excellent work this year from Jane Campion and Kathryn Bigelow proves that the fairer sex retains a strong voice in modern cinema, women are virtually absent from the recent opuses of The Coen Brothers, P.T. Anderson, and the other auteurs du jour.  While talented in crafting their female characters, Quentin Tarantino and Lars von Trier too often toe the line of misogyny, no matter how much either denies it.

It’s telling that the only two active male directors arguably committed to incorporating feminist ideology in their work, Todd Haynes and Pedro Almodovar, both acknowledge a direct influence from the master of the Technicolor melodrama, Douglas Sirk.  While the term has been gradually denigrated to the realm of Gossip Girl and the teeth-grindingly prolific output of Tyler Perry, melodrama was, in Sirk’s hands, a vehicle for exploring the insular concerns of women in the domestic realm.

Often framing his heroines through windows and mirrors and painting their worlds with a bracingly artificial palette, Sirk exposed the inner turmoil of his repressed characters by amplifying the Hollywood Artifice of the 1950s.  Unsurprisingly he attracted some of the greatest talent of the era: Barbara Stanwyck, Lauren Bacall, and Lana Turner, among others.  Sirk’s commitment to defining his characters not by their relationships to men, but by through psychological desires and deficiencies represents a clean break from the cinematic conventions of the past.  His films All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, and Imitation of Life are revered for their progressive takes on sexuality and race.  Meanwhile the reactionary mindlessness of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic* and He’s Just Not That Into You continues to be the bread and butter of the female targeted film audience.

The regression from Sirk’s depiction of women is troubling for a number of reasons.  It demonstrates a lack of interest in male filmmakers to present female protagonists in terms that are not broadly drawn or purely sexual.  Even more detrimental is the growing sense that feminist theory is unapproachable for male directors due to a perceived lack of experience.  The themes of alienation and dissatisfaction in Sirk’s films were as palpable and relevant in 1956 as they are today.  As the decade reaches its tentative conclusion, it seems as if a feminine re-examination of the “serious” subjects that have dominated the public consciousness is seriously overdue.

*I was hoping this film would be an eye-opening expose on the horrors of Shopahol addiction.  Not the case.