Brave Helen. What's happening to you is an illusion, a charming nightmare. . .
It so happened that the first film I watched with the participation of June Allison was the adaptation of Allcote - "Little Women" Mervyn LeRoy. And I didn't watch it because of June, but because of the small role of young Elizabeth Taylor. Since then, June has been strongly associated with the role of Joe: a boyishly mischievous and purposeful heroine. In the film, LeRoy June showed herself very vividly and her interpretation of Joe (just to my personal taste) is almost flawless. After a while, I learned that June is not a brunette (like LeRoy), but a real classic Hollywood blonde, widely known for her roles in musicals and melodramatic films. One of these films is “Interlude” by Douglas Sirk. The film is not among the best in Sirk and over time was pretty forgotten and cast into the shadows. Becoming the smallest and modest "interlude" in a number of other more significant works of the master.
Sirk is widely known to film lovers as a master of “high kitsch”: he brought Hollywood chic in his works to such consistency that he quietly brought him to another level: pop art and then parody. But it can not be said that emphasizing the artificiality of the scenery and making the characters suffocate from an overabundance of heartfelt feelings, Sirk personally did not feel love for all this: Hollywood, lush dresses and beautiful hairstyles, bright interiors and loud music in moments of kissing. At the same time, Sirk always had something to say, so the form of his films is a screen for their content. His films are beacons of the whole decade (50s), they are part of mythology and cinematic culture in general. "Interlude" is slightly lost against the background of such monsters as "Everything that is allowed by heaven" and "Imitation of life", but it is also a very worthy thing.
This time Technicolor is more moderate. This is compensated by a number of high-quality frames, the musical repertoire (from Wagner to The McGuire Sisters), the temperamental “eternal Hollywood Italian” (which reproduces the gentleman’s pickup set, which we witnessed in the film “Summer Time”.) As well as a fabulous intonation: during the film, the main character Helen constantly exclaims about pink dreams, beautiful novels and the impossibility of the beauty she contemplates. There is a roll call with the previously mentioned "Little Women": Rossano played Professor Bayer in the film adaptation of LeRoy. The heroine Marianna Koch - Remi is shown as a beautiful enchanted princess. At the concert, Remy and Helen appear in dresses of different colors: Remy in black, Helen in white, which enhances the contrast and creates a visual antagonism.
The poster of the film depicts a charming young girl, similar to Angie Dickinson of the 1957 model, and it is possible that with Angie this image would have become more authentic. But realizing Sirk’s directorial style, you realize that June is a more suitable option, which makes the picture slightly “uncomfortable” and wrong. You realize that this brash and brisk American aunt is able to throw herself into the lake after someone. This makes the weak frame of the film, which gives the fight against cosmopolitanism (and, incidentally, reminiscent of the early Habaner’s Sirka) more stable, albeit no less fake at its core. But as I mentioned earlier, no one has fetishized the artificial like Sirk, while simultaneously carving sparks of authenticity and depth from it.
And there are some really amazing allusions. At the moment of seducing the heroine by the Italian Rossano begins to rain. And it seems that soon the water will overflow the banks. “Water rise has reached alarm level,” Rossano says in a dark room. "Don't think about anything." You just have to watch the hero go hungry into Helen's lips. Beautiful, not a movie.
7.5 out of 10