Sirk, Douglas

Sirk, Douglas (1900-1987), prolific Danish director. Born Claus Detlev Sierk in Hamburg, Sirk changed his nationality from Danish to German to American in the course of his life. He studied in Munich and Hamburg after World War I, before beginning to work as a playwright and theatre director in Bremen (1923-1929) and Leipzig (1929-1936). As German theatre began to feel the pinch of Nazi disapproval, however, Sirk moved into cinema and immediately showed a natural mastery of melodrama in a series of costume films. His best works of this period were Zu Neuen Ufern (1937; To New Shores) and La Habañera (1937), both starring the Swedish actress Zarah Leander.

Sirk moved to the United States at the outbreak of World War II, where he found himself in Hollywood a complete unknown. He produced Hitler's Madman, about the Heydrich assassination, as a freelance in 1943, and in 1944 Summer Storm, an adaptation of the Chekhov play The Shooting Party which he directed, was well received by critics. He went on to direct a string of thrillers that proved him a great stylist (1947; Personal Column, aka Lured; 1948; Sleep, My Love; 1949; Shockproof.)

In 1950 Sirk joined the Universal company, where he directed some florid melodramatic films of the period, including Magnificent Obsession (1954); All That Heaven Allows (1956); Written on the Wind (1957); The Tarnished Angels (1958), perhaps Sirk's greatest triumph; and Imitation of Life (1959).

Following Imitation of Life, Sirk fell ill and moved to Switzerland to recover. Thereafter his career in films took second place to his old love, the theatre. He directed a number of classical productions in the Residenz-Theater in Munich in the 1960s, before returning to Hamburg in 1969. After mischievously announcing his own death on several occasions, Sirk died for real in Lugano, Switzerland, in 1987. He will be remembered as one of the two or three greatest masters of Hollywood melodrama, a genius of lighting, camera movement, composition, and fluid narrative.