MIXED EMOTIONS 1950S-STYLE MELODRAMA GETS A MODERN TWIST.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Writer

Julianne Moore used to watch them on Saturday afternoons when she was a young girl and they were shown on TV on the ``Million Dollar Movie Theater.'' Dennis Quaid doesn't recall being a big fan; he was just excited by the chance to say, ``The whole thing has put me in a foul state,'' in a movie. Dennis Haysbert liked them as long as Sidney Poitier was in them.

The films in question are sometimes called women's pictures (the expression ``chick flicks'' hadn't been coined yet), weepies or melodramas. Made in the 1950s and turned into an art form by Danish-born director Douglas Sirk, these movies featured lush colors, intricate lighting schemes, sweeping camera movements and a depth of feeling that sometimes feels a bit corny to today's knowing, jaded audiences. But back then, flamboyance was something to be courted, not avoided.

Underneath all the heightened emotions and smooth surfaces, movies like Sirk's ``All That Heaven Allows'' and ``Written on the Wind'' were full of secret codes and symbols that pointedly probed the ugly realities lurking beneath the fixed smiles of the Eisenhower era. They were shrewd reports from the home front packaged in the most bourgeois form possible - the melodrama.

Now along comes a new movie that takes Sirk's blueprint and puts a contemporary spin on it. Todd Haynes' ``Far From Heaven,'' which opens Friday, can be considered an honest, heartfelt homage - the movie embodies Sirk's love for color, lighting and camera work - but for all its artifice, the film goes deeper than that. The 1950s movies could only hint at the nature of its middle-class characters' unrest. Haynes, while remaining true to those films' look and feel, is able to spell it out.

That means S-E-X and class, but also - and this is unique to Haynes' film - race.

The film is set in the fall of 1957 in suburban Hartford, Conn. (just in time for the spectacular New England autumn colors). Moore and Quaid play Frank and Cathy Whitaker, a seemingly perfect couple with two kids, lots of money and plenty of standing in the community. Frank is a leading sales executive for Magnatech TV; Cathy is extolled in the local newspaper for her contributions to culture and because she's ``a woman as devoted to her family as she is kind to the Negroes.''

But Frank's got problems. The foul state that Quaid alluded to earlier comes from a DUI arrest, which is actually the least of his worries. Frank has been drinking because he's been repressing (and expressing) a secret sexual identity. Cathy, feeling cut off from her husband, becomes friends with the handsome family gardener, Raymond (Haysbert), who is patient, kind, a good listener, but also African-American. And that brands their friendship as scandalous.

Done by someone else, ``Far From Heaven'' could have easily lapsed into cynical camp. But the Encino-born Haynes (whose previous films include ``Safe'' and ``Velvet Goldmine'') wasn't interested in coolly removing himself - or his audience - from the material. He wanted people to wholeheartedly buy into the story's extreme highs and lows.

Hold the irony

``This is almost the opposite of a movie like 'American Beauty,''' Haynes says. ``A lot of movies are there to reward a guarded cynicism. We're given so many excuses for not trusting in emotionally investing things. And the scary thing about that is that the meaning suffers. Meaning is based on an emotional commitment at a certain level. What's important to fight about? What's important to care about? This movie is a curious way to reignite that kind of commitment, and it's in a place you'd least expect it to happen.''

Moore, who worked with Haynes on the critically lauded, dreamy disease satire ``Safe'' in 1995, says she wondered why her character kept smiling through the movie, all the way until the film's final scene. Then she was hit with an epiphany.

``I thought, 'Oh my God, he's made a movie about the failure of American optimism, about how we believe we can change the world and our communities and our lives - and sometimes we can't,' '' says Moore, whose performance has garnered strong Oscar buzz, particularly after winning the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in September.

And that's certainly one way of reading the film. One could also look at the 1950s setting and notice how Moore's housewife is essentially a prisoner in her own home, paralyzed by her solitude and the scant choices and narrow roles afforded women in the 1950s. Or you could look at the 1950s setting and see how Cathy and Raymond's skin color made them unwelcome in each other's world. Or you could look at the 1950s setting and marvel at the therapy choices Frank is offered to cure his ``disease.''

But in reality, Haynes says, the movie's midcentury backdrop is really just a smoke screen to make a larger point about modern times and how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

``It's easy to dismiss the '50 as this very different, much more restricted time, but all you have to do is open up the paper these days and wonder how much we've really progressed,'' Haynes says. ``Of course we've come some ways since then. But that's what we're supposed to think. And the danger in thinking that way is that you overlook the wrongs that are still there and the moments of real progressive thought that have been buried. Watching this film, it's still easy to recognize ourselves and where we remain as a society.''

Woman on the verge 

An example of that arrested development can be found by looking at how hard Haynes had to struggle to simply get ``Far From Heaven'' made. The boyish, 41-year-old filmmaker says he had no problem generating interest based on his script, but when it came time to set the budget, he had to fight for every dollar because the movie was - horror of horrors - told from a woman's point of view. (The movie ultimately cost $14 million.)

``Studios consider any film about a woman to be an absolute financial risk, sort of a radical experiment that's generally best not to be undertaken,'' Haynes says.

Complicating matters was the difficulty in attracting a well-known actor to play second lead to a woman and, in Haynes words, ``not get paid $1 million for their pain in doing so.'' It's a state of affairs that clearly angers Moore, who saw her planned biopic of aviator Amelia Earhart disintegrate last year because she couldn't find a male co-star. As such, signing Quaid for ``Heaven'' amounted to a casting coup.

``I've always said that guys don't want to be No. 2,'' Moore says. ``If they're not No. 1 on the call sheet, they have a hard time. It's just the way it has happened. There's not parity. It doesn't exist. We haven't come quite as far as we thought we have.''

Quaid, whose understated work is among the film's many pleasures, says accepting the movie wasn't a big deal or a blow to his masculinity. ``For me, it was just a chance to work with a great director who had a great script. If you have that, the rest will follow.''

For those involved with ``Far From Heaven,'' what will follow may ultimately be a long ride through the awards season, given the rapturous reviews the movie has been receiving.

Haynes calls the reaction at the Toronto and Venice film festivals ``fantastic,'' an indication that ``people still have a pulse; they're still breathing.''

``Honestly, making this movie and having it penetrate our experiences as contemporary, very cynical moviegoers seemed like an impossible task,'' Haynes says. ``But I think it's turned out to be a nice example of how purely cinematic storytelling carries with it potential for enormous emotional power. Yeah, I think it's an art film, but it's one you can bring your mother and grandmother to.''

Melo fellows, gloomy gals

``Far From Heaven'' director Todd Haynes says you don't have to have a background in Douglas Sirk movies or other classic melodramas to enjoy his movie. In fact, he notes that James Schamus and David Linde, who run Focus Features (the film's distributor), would sure appreciate it if journalists kept the Sirk references to a minimum for fear of scaring off the average moviegoer. (Sorry, guys.)

But just in case you want to know what inspired Haynes to create his film's look and tightly wound story, check out the following films:

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955): Middle-age widower Jane Wyman falls for her young stud gardener (Rock Hudson), much to the horror of her grown children and society friends. This Sirk film provided Haynes' most direct inspiration, though he notes that the actor (Dennis Haysbert) playing his movie's nurseryman is ``more talented, but not less handsome.''

WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956): Another lush Sirk melodrama with Hudson and Lauren Bacall playing bystanders in the travails of an alcoholic oil baron (Robert Stack) and his nymphomaniac sister (Dorothy Malone).

IMITATION OF LIFE (1934 and 1959): John Stahl's early version was a Best Picture nominee, but it's Sirk's overblown version with Lana Turner that is best remembered today. The movie's subtext - materialism wreaking havoc with the nuclear family - is just as relevant now as it was all those years ago.

MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1935 and 1954): Sirk again remakes Stahl in another pairing of actors - Hudson and Wyman. Here Hudson plays a drunken playboy who kills a saintly man and blinds his wife in a car accident. Haunted by guilt, the cad dedicates himself to medicine in a desperate (and rather ridiculous) attempt at redemption.

RECKLESS MOMENT (1949): Mother murders to save her daughter from a lecherous older man only to find herself blackmailed. Remade last year as ``The Deep End.''

- G.W.

CAPTION(S):

12 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 3 -- cover -- color) Left to right: Dennis Quaid, Julianne Moore, Dennis Haysbert.

(4 -- 7) Cast of ``Far From Heave,'' clockwise from top left: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Patricia Clarkson and Dennis Haysbert.

(8 -- 11) Top to bottom: ``All That Heaven Allows,'' ``Written on the Wind,'' ``Magnificent Obsession,'' ``Imitation of Life.''

(12) - Julianne Moore

Box:

Melo fellows, gloomy gals (see text)