Douglas Sirk: Filmmaker and Philosopher

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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.

Reviews

Who needs Hegel, Heidegger,or Derrida when youve got Douglas Sirk Once again, Robert B. Pippin shows that philosophy still has a lot to learn from the movies. In the bold colors and improbable plots of Sirks melodramas he finds important lessons not just about race, class, and gender, but alsoand perhaps more importantlyabout the limits of moral inquiry. * Martin Woessner, Associate Professor of History & Society, Center for Worker Education, The City College of New York (CUNY), USA *
Professor Pippins book provides extraordinary and perceptive insights into Douglas Sirks Hollywood films. The book unravels a range of arguments with admirable clarity while paying attention to Sirks visual style, as well to as his uses of story and character. Pippin argues that characters in these films often perform actions in ways that are beyond their understanding. This provides these films with a very particular moral atmosphere in which good characters do wrong things, but in ways that, for the most part, engage our sympathy and admiration. * Richard Rushton, Senior Lecturer in Film, Lancaster University, UK *
In this wonderfully provocative study, Robert Pippin explores three of Sirks most famous American melodramas, finding in their excesses and irony a philosophical rigour. Ingeniously, Pippin explains how Sirks sumptuously pessimistic world forecloses, for the characters, any real possibility of love, mutuality and self-knowledge, despite the putative happy endings. For viewers willing to give Sirks films a second or third thought, however, Pippin teaches us to see past the surface of bourgeois morality and discover a more difficult but worthwhile reckoning with the politics of American emotional life and our own complicities with its sympathetic registers. * Jennifer Fay, Professor and Chair of Cinema & Media Arts and Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, USA *

Author Bio

Robert B. Pippin is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Filmed Through Thought: Cinema as Reflective Form (2019), Hegel's Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in "The Science of Logic"(2018), The Philosophical Hitchcock (2017) and Fatalism in American Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy (2012)