I think I nailed it last time.
It's still massively timely (More in the US than here).
Sirk: "I tried to make it into a picture of social consciousness - not only of a white social consciousness, but of a Negro one too. You can't escape what you are. Now the Negroes are waking up to 'Black Is Beautiful'. Both whites and blacks are leading imitated lives.. There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections. If you try to grasp happiness itself your fingers only meet glass. It's hopeless." [Thus the mirrors everywhere.]
Of the funeral scene, Sirk admits he knew this would be his last film - he'd had enough of Hollywood. Ironically he also left on a financial high - it was at that time Universal's most successful picture.
And on Russell Metty: "He was original. He understood. After a while, he came to me with ideas which I had used. The director must listen, too. And in his own way Metty had a feeling for what I was after. His lighting was the best."
And "Every [camera] movement followed one rule, which was a rule of iron with me. (It has been discarded today.) That is, that a camera movement ought to be justified by your actors' movements, and that that your actors' movements must be justified by the camera. The camera is interested in you. The good camera is curious."
He was a very interesting guy.
The following night, Q came up with the brilliant observation that the Lana Turner character is the same as the Susan Kohner character - they both are more interested in their own theatrical careers than their families. This fits in neatly with Sirk's preoccupations with split characters and duality. (Kohner was Oscar-nominated. She pretty much retired after Freud in 1962.)
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