The impossible plot has Rock Hudson as a reckless playboy who (a) lives because Jane Wyman's husband dies, then (b) inadvertently causes Jane's blindness, and (c) becomes an eminent surgeon with only one goal: to make her see. Out of this Sirk created a magnificent, obsessive, consumately ironic essay on blindness and anxiety. Sirk has said, "If I had to stage Magnificent Obsession as a play I wouldn't have survived. It is a combination of kitsch and craziness and trashiness. But craziness is very important, and it saves trashy stuff like Magnificent Obsession. This is the dialectic-there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains the element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art."