In the 1956 melodrama Written on the Wind, director Douglas Sirk introduces the spectator to a Texan oil family, the Hadleys, matched in their wealth only by their dysfunction. Opening on a sports car speeding through dark, empty roads against a skyline dominated by oil wells and derricks, one by one we meet the main characters as they react to the arrival of Kyle Hadley, the drunk driver of the car. Moving from the bright yellow sports car that overloads the frame, to the husband who drunkenly spills off frame, Sirk’s camera cants at a low angle, causing the Hadley mansion to hover eerily above the spectator: the scene is a surreal combination of vibrant colors and abundant shadows that haunt the filmic frame, in the dramatic gusting wind and leaves that herald the entrance of the alcoholic husband, Kyle, and in the amplified melodramatic codes that set the stage for spousal betrayal. Surrounded by spectating characters who trace Kyle’s path of destruction, Sirk’s swelling soundtrack emphasizes performative spaces dominated by wind and dying leaves, reminding the spectator both on and off-screen that “a faithless lover’s kiss is written on the wind [and] just like the dying leaves our dreams we’ve calmly thrown away.” Cutting from a shot of the dutiful and frightened wife, Lucy, struggling weakly from bed, to her concerned love interest and honorable best friend, Mitch, and Kyle’s sultry, nymphomaniac sister, Marylee, in her nightgown, Sirk balances his key characters in a series of consecutive, fixed framings that build an ominous narrative tension at odds with the melancholic non-diegetic score. A gun fires. A woman falls. Throbbing with a sense of otherness in its emotional excess and artificiality, Sirk sets the stage for a critical examination of the American family and postwar materialism. This stage, I argue, escapes the narrative drive of the film to become something else in its delirium – a performative space that allows the spectator a different type of emotive entrance into the cinematic frame. Rather than a conventional understanding of melodrama as a dialectic of excess, where emotion builds and collapses in a process of catharsis, I contend that melodrama enters into a realm of invisibility through the embodiment of the spectator within performances of violent emotion. These heightened emotive moments of the spectator – both within the screen and in the audience viewing the film – allow for the fleeting visibility of the

中文翻译：

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在道格拉斯·西尔克的《随风而逝》中表演疯狂

在1956年的《风中的情节剧》中，导演道格拉斯·西克（Douglas Sirk）向观众介绍了一个德克萨斯州的石油家族哈德利家族，他们的财富仅因功能障碍而匹配。一辆跑车驶过黑暗，空旷的道路，驶向以油井和井架为主的天际线，我们一一遇到主要人物，因为他们对酒后驾车者凯尔·哈德利的到来做出反应。从盛载镜框的亮黄色跑车到醉酒溢出镜框的丈夫，Sirk的摄像头以低角度倾斜，导致Hadley大厦悬停在观众上方怪异：场景是生动色彩和超现实色彩的超现实组合浓烈的阴影笼罩着电影的画面，在剧烈的阵风和树叶中预示着酒鬼丈夫凯尔（Kyle）的到来，在扩大的情节守则中为配偶背叛奠定了基础。Sirk膨胀的配乐四周环绕着追寻Kyle毁灭之路的观众角色，强调了以风和垂死的树叶为主的表演空间，提醒观众在银幕上和银幕外都说：“一个不忠实的情人的吻被写在风中[并且]垂死离开了我们的梦想，我们被平静地抛弃了。” 席尔克从孝顺而受惊的妻子的镜头中挣扎，从疲惫的床上挣扎着挣扎，摆脱了她关心的爱情兴趣和光荣的最好的朋友米奇，以及凯尔的闷热，女神病的妹妹玛丽莉（Marylee）穿着睡衣，他的睡衣平衡了关键人物的性格。一系列连续的，固定的构架，与忧郁的非饮食性得分不相称，形成了不祥的叙事张力。枪射击。一个女人跌倒了。席尔克在情感上的过度和虚假感中与众不同，在为美国家庭和战后唯物主义的批判性考察奠定了基础。我认为，这个阶段逃脱了电影的叙事驱动力，使其成为del妄中的其他东西–一种表演空间，使观众可以通过不同类型的情感进入电影框架。我认为，情节剧不是过度的辩证法，而是情绪在宣泄的过程中兴衰成败的常规理解，我认为情节剧通过旁观者在暴力情感表演中的体现而进入了隐形领域。观众在屏幕上以及在观看电影的观众中，这些激动人心的时刻增加了观众的转瞬即逝的视野。