Watch The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk

A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but nevertheless real vision of the roles that woman are forced to play in society? It's an exploration of the texts and subtexts of commercial films and the subterranean and complicated ways that they affect us and can be read.

The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk is a 2014 documentary with a runtime of 11 minutes. It has received mostly positive reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 6.6.