Magnificent Obsession (1954)

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 beloved local Dr. Phillips has a heart attack and dies waiting for the life-saving device. Thuse 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. For this release, Criterion also presents John M. Stahl's 1935 film versino of th eLloyd C. Douglas novel, starring Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor.