ROCK HUDSON – MAGNIFICENT PARADOX

Within the context of the Cinematek retrospectives dedicated to Rock Hudson and Douglas Sirk, OUR STORY presents a double session around this charismatic and legendary actor. Together with Pink Screens, director Mark Rappaport will introduce his documentary, * Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (1992), a moving portrait in the form of an intimate essay about a star caught between the trappings of success and his concealed homosexuality. The second part of the evening will be a screening of * All That Heaven Allows (1955), the pinnacle of the collaboration between Hudson and Sirk that inspired many filmmakers, from Fassbinder to Todd Haynes, which will be presented in an exceptional Technicolor version.

19H :

Rock Hudson's Home Movies
Mark Rappaport, USA, 1992, 63’, OV FR SUB
Introduction by Mark Rapaport and Pink Screens

21H

All That Heaven Allows
Douglas Sirk, USA, 1955, 88’, OV FR & DUT SUB
Introduction by Mark Rapaport and Pink Screens

* Rock Hudson 

Undisputed Hollywood star of the 1950s and 1960s, Rock Hudson embodies the contradictions between his private life and his artistic career through the ambiguity and voracity of the big studios system in the United States. Discovered while he was working as a lorry driver by Henry Wilson, an agent well-known for dubious behaviour, Rock Hudson was fully manufactured and calibrated by Hollywood into a famous star and box-office sure-shot. But while the factory of stars and dreamy handsome men produced one of its greatest successes with Rock Hudson, it also and especially shone a light on a remarkable talent and a fascinating personality. The American dream with the body of a lumberjack and a glorious Golden Fifties smile, Hudson captivated women and men, but was twisted into the image of incorrigible flirt and powerful seducer. After all, behind this image hid a many-faceted actor, a genius of irony and double-meaning, whose sex-appeal (at times torrid!) was never crass.  This talent for distance and malice reached its zenith in romantic comedy, which was his forte, but he expanded his emotional palette in the sublime melodramas of Douglas Sirk. After all, Rock Hudson marked the end of a period of liberation for male homosexuals with the spread of the AIDS epidemic, for which he became the poster-boy (which Reagan tried to hide) by publicly announcing his illness shortly before his death.