Lies, Damned Lies, and Douglas Sirk’s Magnificent Obsession

It is not a steady wind that brings Nietzsche to the criticism of Magnificent Obsession, a film whose slavish self-sacrifice would doubtless atomize the long-dead German, but we must nonetheless contend with this collision. The following quotation will not immediately come to bear, but let it steep somewhat in the mind as this writing makes its way: “The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement: it is here that our new language perhaps sounds...