Actually I think the cluttered apartment is pretty Sirkian. Have you
have seen "No Room for the Groom." And some of the camera angles used in
it are Sirkian too. As for the country house, the effect of the picture
windows is absolutely key, and connects with the picture windows at the
end of "Magnificent Obsession" and "All That Heaven Allows."

The tiny figures of Annie that you note, which are quite great, such as
her appearance at the "Moulin Rouge" in the background, also have a
Sirkian genealogy: consider the tiny figure of Ron Kirby (the Hudson
character) in the background of the Christmas-tree selling scene of "All
That Heaven Allows." These moments toy with the ambiguity of the human
presence: the figures are incredibly powerful, ghosts in a way, at once
despite and because of being vanishingly small. They connect with the
different but similarly powerful image of "Mr. Source of Infinite Power"
in the operation room scene of "Magnificent Obsession." Background
details whether animate or inanimate have a way of asserting power over
the foreground in Sirk: witness the emergence of the flyer's coffin in
"The Tarnished Angels."

As for the "I can't stop crying till the final credits" moment, I agree
with you, but would place mine a little bit earlier. The real
devastation begins in the scene just before the "all my life" line, with
Sirk's amazing use of mirrors to give Sara Jane's searing "I'm someone
else" their fully awful meaning, setting up the way she whispers her
final loving words to her mother without actually speaking them.

In its greatest scenes, such as everything from this point to the end,
the film is as great as any Sirk made, but I think it's more uneven than
"The Tarnished Angels" or "Written on the Wind" or "A Time to Love and a
Time to Die."

- Fred C.