Details
Movie Description
In Douglas Sirk's emotionally and visually extravagant final film IMITATION OF LIFE, a life's work of subverted melodrama and razor-sharp social commentary are brought to a resounding and baroque climax. In a role that closely resembles and perhaps parodies her own life, Lana Turner plays Lora Meredith, an aspiring actress and single mother who meets Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a black and similarly single and struggling mother. When they move in together, Annie assumes the role of domestic servant and the two women struggle together to raise their two daughters. Annie's daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), favors her father whose skin tone resembles her own extremely light skin, and she slowly comes to resent her mother's black identity. Transcending the feminist labeling that IMITATION OF LIFE risked, the film freely mixes Meredith's rags to riches (with a hefty moral price tag) tale with Annie's scarring struggles to teach her daughter to accept her identity. As Meredith climbs higher and higher in her glamorous rise to stage and screen stardom, she ignores her vulnerable daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) and creates a devastating contrast for the racial and social tragedy that transpires in her own household. With a deft mixture of icy detachment and morose sentimentality rendered through a transcendent art direction, Sirk leads the film onto an inimitable crescendo of highly adorned emotion and tragedy.
Synopsis
Lora Meredith and Annie Johnson are two widows, one white, the other black, who forge a close friendship when financial circumstances demand they share a small, cold-water flat. Their daughters, golden-haired Susie and light-skinned Sarah Jane (who passes for white against her mother's wishes) grow up together. Their financial lot improves when Lora's acting career brings fame and fortune. But life changes little for Annie who continues to work as Lora's maid. Both girls grow to resent their mothers; Susie becomes the spoiled, neglected daughter of a celebrated actress, while Sarah Jane, frustrated at the difficulties of being black in American society, continues to reject her mother's admonitions that she not try to pass.
Film Notes
"Imitation of Life" was director Douglas Sirk's last feature film.
The film was a remake of the 1934 version.
Industry Reviews
"...A prime example of a brilliant director's stealthy use of a denigrated genre to slip in subtle social comment and genuine pathos..."
Entertainment Weekly - Tim Purtell (01/24/2003)
"[P]assionately directed..."
USA Today - Peter Johnson (02/10/2004)
"[A] Lana Turner soap opera turned into an exercise in metaphysical formalism by Sirk's finely textured and densely layered images."
New York Times - Dave Kehr (02/05/2008)
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