Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Dalbert Pringle When it came to lurid melodrama, 1950s-style - (director) Douglas Sirk certainly had an uncanny knack for elevating it all to the fascinating level of pop-art.Sirk's hyper-stylized visuals (always generously applied) seemed to transform the usual hokum into something else, altogether - Like, how about a deliriously excessive representation of an utterly vacuous America?Set on a garish, Texan landscape of bold colours, shiny surfaces and vulgar opulence - Sibling oil-dynasty brats (now self-destructive adults) cling and claw and do their absolute damnedest to destroy all that is precious and joyful around them.From the clear perspective of pure entertainment - "Written On The Wind" all adds up to irresistible, 1950s, American kitsch. Actors Robert Stack, Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone dig, like literal famished prospectors, into their roles with absolute relish and gusto.

tomsview A lot has been written about "Written on the Wind", and it's now considered a classic. However, beyond all the analysis, I just love seeing the stars strut their stuff. Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall play it low key – for the most part anyway – but Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone just go for it.Filthy rich, insecure and hard drinking Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack), sweeps beautiful secretary Lucy Moore (Lauren Bacall) off her feet and marries her almost on a whim. However his best friend and protector from boyhood, Mitch Wayne (Rock Hudson), is secretly in love with Lucy while Kyle's sister, the self destructive, trampy and equally hard drinking Marylee (Dorothy Malone) is in love with Mitch – but not so secretively.Where "Peyton Place" needed a whole town to heat up the screen, the four main characters in "Written on the Wind" hardly needed any outside interference as they explored themes of infidelity, infertility, wife-beating, alcoholism, nymphomania, jealousy and murder.These days every second series on cable or TV seems to tackle themes such as these, in fact we have had more than five decades of this type of drama on the small screen since "Written on the Wind" was made. But it's easy to see how even if the film didn't establish the perfect format for this kind of drama it at least served as an inspiration for what was to come.Although the travails of rich families, usually Southern ones, had been a staple of Hollywood drama for a long time, "Written on the Wind" could be seen as the perfect bridge between the era of the great Hollywood melodramas and the full flowering of drama on television.These days, we know far too much about Rock Hudson's life, and we know the ending, but this movie is a legacy to a man who was so watchable at the height of his powers. "Written on the Wind" has that big movie feeling – it's that important movie you saw on a Friday night or on a rainy Saturday afternoon at the cinema. Here were stars big enough to fill the big screen; they were larger than life. Whenever I watch "Written on the Wind", it always brings that feeling back.

Armand more than a good film, it is a splendid puzzle. not only for cast or themes. but for the science to not be a melodrama like many others. a film who seduce different genre of public. and a high level of performance. sure, it is not out of recipes of genre. but it seems be different and that is the good part. in same measure, it use in wise manner the images,music and symbols and recreate the atmosphere of a lovely classic story. but the cast makes the difference. this fact is so clear. and not for acting itself but for the choice of director for one or other. so, the duty of each is to be himself. and the show is running.

JasparLamarCrabb Probably the most hyperactive great movie ever made. Lauren Bacall marries into a wealthy oil family and soon regrets it. Her husband (Robert Stack) is a drunken bully and her sister-in-law (Dorothy Malone) is a nymphomaniac. She's mistreated by both of them. Things go from unpleasant to ridiculous when Stack's best buddy Rock Hudson starts to show some affection for Bacall. Douglas Sirk's resume is littered with high gloss soap operas, most of them absurd, but this one takes the prize. It's fever-pitched, very well acted (particuarly by Stack & Malone) and never dull. Robert Keith is the family patriarch and Grant Williams plays somebody named Biff. Produced by none other than Albert Zugsmith, the undisputed king of lurid 50s epics!