Let your heart throb and your passions pulse tonight in honor of director Douglas Sirk, born on this day to Danish parents living in Germany in 1897.  Sirk's melodramas ranged from the star-crossed romances Magnificent Obsession and All that Heaven Allows starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson to the dark family drama Written on the Wind, also starring Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone and Lauren Bacall, to the Lana Turner vehicle, Imitation of Life, in which a mother and daughter are in love with the same man, a young African American woman "passes" for white to tragic consequences, and a woman actually dies of a broken heart.  Though Sirk was commercially successful, his critical reputation wasn't established until long after he had stopped making films.  Tarantino is a fan, and in 2002 Todd Haynes directed a full-length homage in his fever dream of a melodrama, Far from Heaven, in which he updated Sirk's themes to include repressed homosexuality and a star-crossed interracial romance.