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 Douglas Sirk’s most flamboyant master classes in melodrama, a delirious Technicolor mix of the sudsy and the spiritual in which Bob and the doctor’s widow, Helen (Jane Wyman), find themselves inextricably linked amid a series of increasingly wild twists, turns, trials, and tribulations.

United States
1954
108 minutes
Color
2.00:1
English
Spine #457

Special Features

High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholar Thomas Doherty
Magnificent Obsession, John M. Stahl’s 1935 adaptation of the same novel, newly restored
From UFA to Hollywood: Douglas Sirk Remembers (1991), a documentary by Eckhart Schmidt
Interview from 2009 with screenwriter Robert Blees
Interviews from 2008 with filmmakers Allison Anders and Kathryn Bigelow, in which they pay tribute to director Douglas Sirk
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

Cover based on a theatrical poster

Special Features

High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film scholar Thomas Doherty
Magnificent Obsession, John M. Stahl’s 1935 adaptation of the same novel, newly restored
From UFA to Hollywood: Douglas Sirk Remembers (1991), a documentary by Eckhart Schmidt
Interview from 2009 with screenwriter Robert Blees
Interviews from 2008 with filmmakers Allison Anders and Kathryn Bigelow, in which they pay tribute to director Douglas Sirk
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

Cover based on a theatrical poster

Cast & Credits