Magnificent Obsession

Douglas Sirk - 1954
Sirk's camera is not particularly revolutionary. It is, however, deeply elegant with a fine touch. Making good use of both sides of the frame with his wide (2:1) format, he also uses a closer view on one side of the frame, with a face over a more distant character.
The general pattern is longer views that are moved into, with some lovely smooth tracks and pans in, usually then changed to a still mid-shot, and then our SRS close-ups. There is a nice elegance about these medium shots, the unhurried reframings, and some nice followings. We have a good look at the place.
The colours and lighting are the most obviously non-diagetic here. Sometimes hyperreal, often we could have a dull area, then with huge saturated blow-ups of a red or green squeaking out of a corner. Not so staid after all. We also have expressive lighting in so far as diffeent colour-schemes; warm and cool; are used for different expressions of feeling by character.
Sirk's lighting immediately comes across as always high-key, almost absurdly, but on closer inspection he is not afraid to use shadow, often on half a face, and often on the half of a face closer to us in a profile shot. Whether this is to help staging, so we concentrate on the right person, or if it is to express the emotional or relationship's situation, I could not divine a pattern.
Sirk doesn't go in for much messing around, his scenes, and the order of them, is very much to the point in a twisting narrative. Some bits seem to get left behind, but this may be a function of the realisation of them as unimportant.
Based on this film, it would be rather much to describe anything going on as 'subversive'. Things are detectable, but the fact that one feels one is out looking for clues is a little desperate.
All the same; clearly we are anti-money obsession, and we want to learn the importance of giving without return. Yet Hudson really does, kind of, do the whole thing just to get the girl. Until maybe the end. More interesting are the sudden surges where the women stand up for themselves; they are here powerful characters, for long periods the only attractive ones in the picture.
One more thing here that may be of interest. Europe here seems posited as an alternative to America. It is where a culture of positivity, of illusion, is seen as silly and is punctured. It is a place of darker, and more multicoloured lighting, in comparison to an occassionally washed-out blank spaces of the American rooms. Well, Sirk was German.