Sirk, Douglas, 1900–87, German-American film director, b. Hamburg as Claus Detlef Sierck. A successful director in German theater and film, he fled the Nazi regime in 1937. Two years later he emigrated to the United States, Americanized his name, moved (1940) to Hollywood, and with fellow émigrés directed several anti-Nazi feature films, the first of which was Hitler's Madmen (1942). The extravagant melodramas for which Sirk is best known were made after he joined Universal studios in 1950. His breakthrough movie, Magnificent Obsession (1954), was followed by such others as All that Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), The Ternished Angels (1957), and Imitation of Life (1959). Sirk's signature films, which generally portray the trials of upper-middle-class life in lush widescreen technicolor, were sometimes dismissed as conventional tearjerkers, but their exquisite visual quality, stylistic sophistication, psychosocial insights, and ironic undertones have made his films influential favorites among many later filmmakers and cinema enthusiasts.

Bibliography

See J. Halliday, ed, Sirk on Sirk (1972, rev. ed. 1997); studies by L. Fischer, ed. (1991) and B. Klinger (1994).

Sirk, Douglas

orig. Claus Detlef Sierck

(born April 26, 1900, Hamburg, Ger.—died Jan. 14, 1987, Lugano, Switz.) German-U.S. film director. He was artistic director of theatres in Bremen (1923–29) and Leipzig (1929–36), Ger., and made several films before fleeing the country in 1937. He arrived in Hollywood in 1939, and in 1943 he directed his first American film, Hitler's Madman. He joined Universal Pictures in 1950, where he directed comedy, western, and war movies but was best known for popular melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), There's Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), and The Tarnished Angels (1957), in which frightful emotional warfare lurks beneath the facade of upper-middle-class life. After directing his greatest success, Imitation of Life (1959), he retired to Europe.