Director: Douglas Sirk
Producer: Ross Hunter
Writers: Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott (screenplay); Fannie Hurst (novel)
Cast: Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner
Music: Frank Skinner, Sammy Fain, Henry Mancini
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Editing: Milton Carruth
Distribution: Universal International Pictures
Release Date: April 17, 1959
Running Time: 125 min
Is there any film more melodramatic than Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life? Indeed the film contains many scenes of an almost operatic intensity that one would be hard pressed to find anything more over-the-top than this gem of a film here. Douglas Sirk could probably be considered responsible for creating the modern American soap opera. His string of suburban melodramas made in the 1950s contain all the elements of a soap opera. The films all have the usual ingredients of a typical potboiler; the familial melodrama, illicit romance, murder, addiction, sex, topical issues and the like, but rather than just turning out syrupy “women’s pictures” as Sirk was accused of doing so by critics at the time he used melodrama as a means to launch critiques of the material society he saw around him. Instead of just simple soap operas Sirk’s films combine drama, dark comedy, social commentary, and evocative camerawork to elevate pieces of pop trash into pop art. Perhaps no film displays Sirk’s talent better than his last film Imitation of Life made in 1959.
Imitation of Life can best be called a melodramatic epic of sorts following the trials and tribulations of aspiring actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner), her daughter Susie (Karin Dicker and later Sandra Dee). Within the first ten minutes of the film she meets a black woman Annie (Juanita Moore) who like Lora has a daughter of her own. Annie’s daughter Sarah-James (Terry Burnham and later Susan Kohner) is a fair-skinned girl who as we learn tries to pass herself off as white so she won’t have to endure the troubles her mother goes through on the basis of her skin color. As the years pass Lora has an on again off again relationship with a photographer Steve Archer (John Gavin) and becomes a famous Broadway actress all while Susie tries to deal with her mother’s absence. Meanwhile Annie continues to struggle with Sarah-Jane’s rejection of her own race whilst trying to lead a simple and devout life. Plenty of melodrama follows of course.
Sirk tells his tale in a multi-layered manner. First off there’s the surface story which is a multiple-hanky tale. The entire thing is told like an opera with each small event taking on monumental importance. Then there’s what’s bubbling under the surface, Sirk’s social commentary. For a viewer who is on the film’s wavelength Imitation of Life holds a spellbinding quality. The melodrama is simply fascinating in the way that television soap operas are fascinating, everything takes place within reality, and yet at the same time it is so far removed from reality that a viewer cannot help but be fascinated. At the same time though, Sirk is critiquing this desire that we have to escape reality. Throughout the film the characters are constantly trying to escape reality only to find its one step ahead of them. Annie is the only character who is really willing to accept the hardships of the real world while Lora, Susie, Sarah-Jane, and Steve all try to live up the good life. For a film so obsessed with surfaces its characters are strikingly realistic, and their conflicts are handled in a more subtle manner than the surface of the film would allow the viewer to believe. Underneath all of the suds, there’s still a human element to the story. These characters feel like real people and the situations are believable despite the fact that everything is played up for melodramatic effect. The reason why the film has aged so well is because Sirk doesn’t allow the film to loose sight of the human element or descend into kitsch.
Plus every scene has two or three different subtexts running through it. Take the scene where Sarah-Jane’s boyfriend discovers she’s white and begins to beat her. It’s a shocking scene, but at the same time the music is a very upbeat jazz soundtrack and the entire sequence is delivered with such style. Is one to laugh? Cringe? Or something else? On one level we feel bad for Sarah-Jane, but at the same time we see the irony in her situation, it was her own fault for getting into the situation she was in, or was it her fault? There are so many scenes in the film which will have you going back and forth between different emotions and ideas. This is what makes Sirk’s satire so great, that he’s able to create so many different reactions from a viewer while still managing to get his ideas across. At the heart of the film, Imitation of Life is both a satire and a document on the American experience
At the end of the film I was in tears because of all the emotion being pumped out from the screen, and yet at the same time I was laughing at the entire production. Sirk directs the entire film with such style and panache. His style manages to be both elegant and lurid at the same time in his use of skewed angles and elegant tracking shots. Also note the gradual buildup in the intensity of the cinematography as the film progresses. The beginning of the film uses mostly browns, greens, and reds with an eye level camera, but as the film progresses the colors become more intense and the camerawork more extravagant. Sirk’s technical mastery is so sumptuous that every shot and movement is perfectly in tune with the music. The film feels almost like a fever dream at times in its execution, and the effect is amazing. Sirk definitely knows how to tell a story cinematically.
The acting in the film isn’t great though. Lana Turner is one of those actresses that is more of an icon than an actor. Her performance is almost a bit too melodramatic and stilted, and yet when placed in with the rest of the film Turner fits in. The same goes for John Gavin’s wooden, pretty boy performance. He feels like a poor man’s Cary Grant, and he’s no replacement for Sirk regular Rock Hudson, but I can’t help but feel that his wooden performance works. The same goes for Sandra Dee and Juanita Moore. However Susan Kohner does an amazing job as the older Sarah-Jane, her performance is more natural and she brings a dose of unrestrained sensuality to her character. She’s sort of like the straight man in a comedy, her performance is more method than melodrama, but it still has that burning intensity especially in some of the later scenes. I feel that while the acting fits the film well, it could have been better, because aside from Susan Kohner I just wasn’t riveted by the performances, I was riveted by the actor’s ability to be intense.
Imitation of Life is a strange film, upon release it was loathed by the critics and loved by the audiences, but that seems to have changed now. Audiences today laugh at the Sirk films, while critics and filmmakers such as Roger Ebert, Todd Haynes, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder revere Sirk. His oeuvre is entertaining, intelligent, cinematic, and enthralling, and Imitation of Life stands at the pinnacle of the fifties soapers.
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