The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
All I Desire
Introduction by author Tom Ryan
When
Wed 24 Aug 2022
At the behest of her daughter – who has taken a lead role in the final-year high-school play – a fading vaudeville artist returns to visit the family she abandoned before pursuing her ultimately lacklustre stage career. Sirk brilliantly deploys stark black-and-white compositions and sweeping camera movements to precisely register a vivid small-town American milieu, compelling this simple family melodrama toward its heavy and moving climax. Featuring a characteristically sharp and bold lead performance by Barbara Stanwyck.
To be introduced by Tom Ryan, author of The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions (2019).
Also screening on Wed 24 August
Program
"Life's parade at your fingertips": Douglas Sirk
All I Desire (1953) – Wed 24 Aug, 7pm
Imitation of Life (1959) – Wed 24 Aug, 8.45pm
All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Wed 31 Aug, 7pm
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) – Wed 31 Aug, 8.40pm
Shockproof (1949) – Wed 7 Sept, 6.30pm
April, April! (1935) – Wed 7 Sept, 8pm
Boefje (1939) – Wed 7 Sept, 9.35pm
About the program
Best known as the director of a string of lavish Hollywood melodramas made for Universal Pictures in the 1950s, Douglas Sirk’s (1897–1987) feature-film career spanned almost 40 films between 1935 and 1959. He was a successful theatre director in Weimar Germany prior to transferring his passion and critical eye to the silver screen, moving from Nazi Germany to the United States in the late 1930s.
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
