ONE DESIRE (1955)

Handsome, charismatic & ambitious, 1955 Rock Hudson compartmentalized his personal life, denying his true (gay) desires to take on a loveless marriage designed to further his career, a stunt marriage that quickly flamed out.   It’s the story of his life and also the story of this film, shot the very year he’d live thru the situations.  As he says on screen, ‘Our marriage was a mistake . . . yours and mine!’  And while the film is no more than a typical ‘woman’s meller’ from producer Ross Hunter, the mediocre kind he made when Douglas Sirk wasn’t available to transform them, it has an obvious grim fascination.  Anne Baxter stars as the backup mate Rock puts aside*, the two restarting in a new town as platonic pals after bonding in an infamous gambling house: he as top dealer/she as head hostess.  But while he successfully reinvents himself as a fast-rising banker whose aspirations take him straight to the bed of the owner’s daughter (Julie Adams), Anne’s similar past catches up to her and sees her run out of town as an unfit surrogate mom.  Wised up, she returns to seek revenge against the ‘happy’ couple who’ve cast her aside and taken the foster kids (one Rock’s kid brother, the other an orphaned Natalie Wood*) she’s raised as her own.  Journeyman megger Jerry Hopper doesn’t miss all the possibilities & implications in here, but sure leaves a lot on the table.  It helps turn the film into a demonstration of just what a great stylist & director like Douglas Sirk brought to these things, subverting the generic atmosphere & hack acting producer Ross Hunter was satisfied with into a personal vision.  Here, it’s standard-issue supporting players, 'luxury' interiors from the Montgomery Ward catalog, flat/flooded lighting.  Ugh.  How did Sirk get away with making his films so distinctive & personal in look, dramatic texture, levels of acting & social condemnation?  Maybe fighting Hunter’s lack of taste was one of the reasons he retired at only 62 after IMITATION OF LIFE/’59.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *As the denied element in the love triangle, Anne Baxter’s smoky baritone does add an unintentional(?) touch of manly sub-text to things.

DOUBLE-BILL:  Sirk’s greatest achievement, WRITTEN ON THE WIND/’56, wasn’t produced by Ross Hunter, but IMITATION, which was, is a close second.   OR: *Very good here, Wood’s next film was REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE/’56.