Criterion has finally released a Blu-ray upgrade of Douglas Sirk’s 1956 film Written on the Wind after most of Sirk’s other films have long been available in the format. What is odd about the delay in the release is that Written on the Wind, long available on standard DVD, is the only one of Sirk’s films to contain an Oscar-winning performance.

Jane Wyman had been nominated two years earlier for Magnificent Obsession and both Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore would be nominated three years hence for Imitation of Life, but only Written on the Wind would produce a winner.

The now celebrated German Sirk (1897-1987) was pretty much taken for granted during his time in Hollywood which ran from 1943-1959, despite having made some of the best films of the era.

Sirk’s first Hollywood film, 1943’s Hitler’s Madman, starring Patricia Morison, Alan Curtis, and John Carradine as Nazi SS Commander Reinhardt Heydrich was released the same year as Fritz Lang’s Hangmen Also Die starring Brian Donlevy, Anna Lee, and Walter Brennan in which Heydrich’s character was fictionalized under another name. Lang’s film was a bigger box-office hit but both films, along with Edward Dmytryk’s Hitler’s Children, starring Bonita Granville and Tim Holt, released the same year, were early examples of Nazi horrors depicted on the screen that have only gained in reputation since.

Sirk’s other 1940s films included three classic crime dramas, Summer Storm, starring George Sanders and Linda Darnell; A Scandal in Paris, starring Sanders and Signe Hasso; and Lured starring Sanders and Lucille Ball. It wasn’t until Sirk went to work for Universal in the 1950s, however, that he gained his reputation as the go-to director for women’s films.

Among Sirk’s now highly regarded early 1950s films were Thunder on the Hill, starring Claudette Colbert and Ann Blyth; Has Anybody Seen My Gal (a rare comedy for the director), starring Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie; All I Desire, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Richard Carlson; Magnificent Obsession, starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson; There’s Always Tomorrow, starring Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray; and All That Heaven Allows, reuniting Wyman and Hudson in the now classic film that inspired both Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Todd Haynes’ Far from Heaven.

Hudson had been a protégé of Sirk who directed him in several films besides those mentioned above. He and Lauren Bacall were the top-billed stars of Written on the Wind, but the emphasis was on third- and fourth-billed Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone.

Hudson plays the poor but hard-working friend of oil tycoon scion Stack who married Bacall after a whirlwind romance, having taken her from Hudson. Malone is Stack’s wild and crazy sister.

The film was highly controversial at the time as it explored subjects that were no-no’s under the production code, namely Stack’s impotence and Malone’s nymphomania.

Released exclusively in Los Angeles at the end of the year, Stack and Malone were the early favorites to win the year’s supporting Oscars.

For Stack, the role was a turnaround for the actor who made his screen debut as the boy who gave Deanna Durbin her first kiss in 1939’s First Love. He subsequently mostly played bland second leads in such films as To Be or Not to Be and The High and the Mighty.

For Malone, who had been in Hollywood for more than a decade, it was the second standout role for the usually demure actress as a seductress in two years, the first being in 1955’s Battle Cry opposite Tab Hunter.

Stack was up against Don Murray in Bus Stop, Anthony Perkins in Friendly Persuasion, Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, and Mickey Rooney in The Bold and the Brave. Quinn, who had won previously the award for Viva Zapata! four years earlier was the surprise winner.

Malone was up against Mildred Dunnock in Baby Doll, Mercedes McCambridge in Giant, for which Hudson was a Best Actor nominee, and both Eileen Heckart and Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed. It was an easy win for the actress who by her own admission was so prudish that she had to be coerced into performing the highly erotic dance that is one of the film’s highlights.

Sirk’s remaining films for Universal included the biographical war drama, Battle Hymn once again starring Rock Hudson; the tearjerker Interlude, starring June Allyson and Rossano Brazzi; the aviation drama The Tarnished Angels, reuniting Hudson, Stack, and Malone; the anti-war drama A Time to Love and a Time to Die, starring John Gavin and Lilo Pulver; and his biggest box-office hit, the remake of the classic tearjerker Imitation of Life, starring Lana Turner along with John Gavin, Sandra Dee, and Oscar nominees Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore.

Criterion’s Blu-ray of Written on the Wind is from a 2K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Extras include the 2008 documentary Acting for Douglas Sirk, which was itself taken from archival interviews circa 1980 with Rock Hudson (1925-1985), Robert Stack (1919-2003), Dorothy Malone (1924-2018), and producer Albert Zugmith (1910-1983). It centers on the three stars’ participation in both Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels.

Also included is a new interview with film scholar Patricia White about the film and melodrama in general, along with the film’s trailer. There is no feature length commentary.

This week’s new releases include the long-awaited U.S. Blu-ray debuts of 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express and 1978’s Foul Play.