Magnificent Obsession (Criterion Collection) (DVD)

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. 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 to one another amid a series of increasingly wild twists, turns, trials, and tribulations. For this release, Criterion also presents John M. Stahl's 1935 film version of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel, starring Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor.

Starring: Robert Taylor, Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Otto Kruger, Barbara Rush, Brad Johnson, Harvey Grant, Joseph Mell, Lucille Lamarr, Will J. White, Gregg Palmer, Paul Cavanagh, Sara Shane, Richard H. Cutting, Judy Nugent, Helen Kleeb, Rudolph Anders, Fred Nurney, John Mylong, Alexander Campbell, Mae Clarke, Joe Mell, Robert B. Williams, Will White, George Lynn, Jack Kelly, Lee Roberts, Lisa Gaye, Kathleen O'Malley, William Leslie, Lance Fuller, Brad Jackson, Myrna Hansen, Harold Dyrenforth, Norbert Schiller, Paul Levitt, Joy Hallward, Helen Winston, Gail Bonney, Charles Victor, George Brand, Jack Gargan, Jack Chefe, Robert Herron, Herschel Graham

Director: Ross Hunter