We are pleased to present new prints of four key mid-fifties films by Douglas Sirk, who, perhaps more than any Hollywood director, had a window on the postwar "aesthetics of plenty." First in Germany, then here, Sirk made melodramas, dark reflections of characters who take the mirror image of life for the real thing. He was admired by a new generation of filmmakers in the seventies (his influence on Fassbinder is legend) for the baroque explosions of color, bold imagery, and savage irony he passed off as entertainment. Special thanks to Dick Costello (Universal SMG), Peter Lang (IPMA, Inc.), and Universal preservationists Dave Oakden and Bob O'Neil. 2000