Magnificent Obsession

Reckless playboy Bob Merrick (ROCK HUDSON, in his breakthrough role) crashes his speedboat, requiring emergency attention from the town's only resuscitator-at the very moment that a beloved local doctor has a heart attack and dies waiting for the lifesaving device. Thus begins one of the most flamboyant master classes in melodrama from DOUGLAS SIRK (All That Heaven Allows), a delirious Technicolor mix of the sudsy and thespiritual in which Bob and the doctor's widow, Helen (The Lost Weekend's JANE WYMAN), find themselves inextricably linked amid a series of increasingly wild twists, turns, trials, and tribulations.High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrackAudio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholarThomas DohertyMagnificent Obsession, John M. Stahl's 1935 adaptation of the same novel, newly restoredFrom UFA to Hollywood: Douglas Sirk Remembers (1991), a documentary by Eckhart SchmidtInterview from 2009 with screenwriter Robert BleesInterviews from 2008 with filmmakers Allison Anders and Kathryn Bigelow, in which they pay tribute to director Douglas SirkTrailerPLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien