Based on a 1945 novel, Written on the Wind is a thinly-disguised account of a real-life scandal, with names, location and key details such as the source of the wealth of the family involved changed. Dismissed on release as glossy and over-the-top, its reputation has since grown along with that of its director Douglas Sirk, a German emigré to Hollywood who is admired by notable contemporary directors such as Pedro Almodovar, Kathryn Bigelow and Todd Haynes. Catalyst of the New German Cinema movement Rainer Werner Fassbinder modelled his own 1970s melodramas on Sirk’s films.

“Douglas Sirk has made the tenderest films I know, they are the films of someone who loves people and doesn’t despise them as we do. As a spectator I follow with Sirk the traces of human despair. In ‘Written on the Wind’ the good, the ‘normal’, the ‘beautiful’ are always utterly revolting; the evil, the weak, the dissolute arouse one’s compassion.” Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder

“A perverse and wickedly funny melodrama in which you can find the seeds of ‘Dallas’, ‘Dynasty’ and all the other prime-time soaps. Sirk is the one who established their tone, in which shocking behaviour is treated with passionate solemnity, while parody bubbles underneath.” Critic Roger Ebert