American Beauty got right what Sirk's films went wrong

Rating: 10/10 (29 September 2002)

Douglas Sirk is renowned as the key director of the 1950s family melodramas. He saw through the facade of jolly suburbia to the imprisonment of that society. Mendes, in probably the greatest directorial debut since Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, captured the beauty and dysfunction of suburbia. With Conrad Hall's stylish cinematography which is similar to that of Sirk's Technicolor features and Alan Ball's brilliant script, American Beauty goes much deeper than Sirk ever did. The brilliance is even more with the balance of drama and black comedy. Sirk's films had many characters that were so static and unemotional they seemed like motionless statues of particular lifestyles for instance any Rock Hudson role in Sirk's films. Mendes goes further into the characters so the audience at least empathizes with all the characters. Also instead of only one character saved from societal imprisonment by an outsider, an intruder is helping all the characters in American Beauty. The 50s might have been the golden age of family melodrama, but it wasn't till 1999 before it got its Citizen Kane.