BackDouglas Sirk
Filmmaker and Philosopher (book in English)
- Type
- Essays
- Subject
- Director > Douglas Sirk
- Douglas Sirk, philosophy
- Publishing Date
- 2021
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Collection
- Philosophical Filmmakers
- Language
- English
Dimensions
- Physical desc.
- Paperback • 168 pages • 25 €
6 x 8.5 inches (15 x 21.5 cm) - ISBN
- 978-1-350-19567-7
- User Ratings
(0 vote)Average rating:
0 rating 
= We can do without0 rating 
= Good book0 rating 
= Excellent book0 rating 
= Unique / a referenceYour rating: -
Book Presentation:
It would be easy to dismiss the films of Douglas Sirk (1897-1987) as brilliant examples of mid-century melodrama with little to say to the contemporary world. Yet Robert Pippin argues that, far from being marginal pieces of sentimentality, Sirk's films are rich with irony, insight and depth. Indeed Sirk's films, often celebrated as classics of the genre, are attempts to subvert rather than conform to rules of conventional melodrama.
The visual style, story and characters of films like All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life are explored to argue for Sirk as an incredibly nuanced moral thinker. Instead of imposing moralising judgements on his characters, Sirk presents them as people who do 'wrong' things often without understanding why or how, creating a complex and unsettling ethics. Pippin argues that it this moral ambiguity and ironic richness enables Sirk to produce films that grapple with important themes such as race, class and gender with real force and political urgency.
Douglas Sirk: Filmmaker and Philosopher argues for a filmmaker who was a 'disruptive not restorative' auteur and one who broke the rules in the most interesting and subtle of ways.
See the publisher website: Bloomsbury Publishing
> From the same author:
Philosophie politique du western (2021)
Les ambiguïtés du mythe américain
The Philosophical Hitchcock (2019)
Vertigo and the Anxieties of Unknowingness
by Robert B. Pippin
(in English)
> Books with the same or similar title:
> On a related topic:
De la dynamique des larmes au cinéma (2023)
Sirk, Kieslowski, Bergman
Le Charme et la Sublimation (2017)
Essai sur le désir et la renonciation dans l'œuvre d'Eric Rohmer
Subject: Director > Eric Rohmer
Note: A book on a slightly gray background is a book that is no longer currently published or that may be difficult to find in bookstores. The shown price is that of the book at its release, the price on the second-hand market may be very different.
A book on a beige background is a book published in a language other than French.