Description
Reckless playboy Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson, in his breakthrough role) crashes his speedboat, requiring emergency attention from the town’s only resuscitator—at the very moment that a beloved local doctor has a heart attack and dies waiting for the lifesaving device. Thus begins one of Douglas Sirk’s most flamboyant master classes in melodrama, a delirious Technicolor mix of the sudsy and the spiritual in which Bob and the doctor’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman), find themselves inextricably linked amid a series of increasingly wild twists, turns, trials, and tribulations.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholar Thomas Doherty
- Magnificent Obsession, John M. Stahl’s 1935 adaptation of the same novel, newly restored
- From UFA to Hollywood: Douglas Sirk Remembers (1991), a documentary by Eckhart Schmidt
- Interview from 2009 with screenwriter Robert Blees
- Interviews from 2008 with filmmakers Allison Anders and Kathryn Bigelow, in which they pay tribute to director Douglas Sirk
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
Cover based on a theatrical poster
Criterion Collection:
Since 1984, the Criterion Collection has been dedicated to publishing important classic and contemporary films from around the world in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. No matter the medium—from laserdisc to DVD and Blu-ray to streaming—Criterion has maintained its pioneering commitment to presenting each film as its maker would want it seen, in state-of-the-art restorations with special features designed to encourage repeated watching and deepen the viewer’s appreciation of the art of film.
