Preceded by: The Light That Came (1909, Biograph), an early melodrama of a woman with facial scars who finances an operation for a blind musician whom she loves-even though she fears that if he can see, he will shun her. We can cast aside our customary condescension toward the primitive melodrama; this one shows how far we have not come. (c. 14 mins, Silent, B&W, 16mm, Print courtesy Jon Mirsalis) The impossible plot of Magnificent Obsession becomes exponentially more impossible as the film progresses. Playboy Rock Hudson, though undeserving, nevertheless lives because Jane Wyman's noble husband dies. To make matters worse, he inadvertently causes Jane's blinding in a car accident. To make matters better, he journeys to Vienna, becomes an eminent surgeon with one goal: to make her see. Out of this, Sirk created a magnificent, obsessive, consummately ironic essay on blindness and anxiety. Wyman's characterization of a woman who is blind is not an unfamiliar denizen of the melodrama: patiently waiting for a cure, at the same time she is hopeless and aware of herself as a burden on sighted individuals (one in particular). Yet it would not be callous of us to say that Sirk is both aware of her extreme behavior and unconcerned with her condition; ever the anguished ironist, observer of the hollowness of middle-class ideals, his idyllic color vistas might even seem to mock his heroine's blindness. But it is us he is mocking: playing on our pity, he creates a metaphor for our fear.