Imitation of Life
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Movie Reviews of Imitation of Life
Movie Review: An Important Film
Summary: 5 Stars
"Why do we always have to live in the back?" a young Sarah Jane asks her mother. In Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life, "living in the back" is what blacks must do if they are to be good people. But Sarah Jane DOESN't want to live in the back and this is what makes her bad.One thing I could never understand about this movie was why Sirkes seemed to make poor old Sarah Jane the villian. After watching this film again tonight, I realize that Sarah Jane did not want to be white, but rather, she wanted to have the benifits that white people had; and this, in my opinion, made her "bad."
Juanita Moore is wonderful as Annie Johnson but she inhabits a role full of stereotypes and cliches. She is the good suffering black woman who is the ideal servant to her white mistress. Thus, she is nonthreatning, unlike Sarah Jane who, because she wants all the things that whites get, is a rebel and a threat to white society. Thus, Sarah Jane must be punished and ultimately humiliated.
This movie is beautifully filmed and I enjoyed the title song sung by Earl Grant at the beginning. Sirk does innovative camerawork with mirrors and his colors are very lush. Sandra Dee as Susie is annoying and while Lana Turner can be over the top, this movie is most notable for the performances by Susan Kohner and especially Juanita Moore, two actresses who earned Best Supporting Oscar Nominations for their performances.
A remake of the Preston Sturges 1930s film with Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, and Freddie Washington (who is dynamic) as Sarah Jane, this new Imitation of Life is much more aware of the society it is commenting on than the original could ever be. In any case, this is a movie that should be applauded for its attempt to address racial inequalities and as a time capsule of its period.
The DVD has nothing new to offer. But there is a widescreen version of the film so that you can appreciate all the lush colors, and there is also the original theatrical trailer and langauge options. While two of Sirk's films -- "All That Heaven Allows" and "Magnificent Obsession" have been released on the Criterion label, I only wish this film had also been issued by it. Then, I think, we would have had a more polished transfer and commentary. Still, this is a great DVD if you are a movie buff and want to see an important film in its original aspect ratio.
Movie Review: THE ORIGINAL "HOLLYWOOD SOAP OPERA!"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Imitation of Life" opens with a sweepingly romantic title song sung by Earl Grant which puts the viewer in the perfect mood for the glitzy drama that is about to unfold. Aspiring actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) meets Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore) a homeless black woman at Coney Island and soon they share a tiny apartment. Each woman has an intolerable daughter, though Annie's little girl Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), is by far the worse. Sarah Jane doesn't like being black; since she's light-skinned (her father was practically white), she spends the rest of the film passing as white, much to her mother's heartache and shame. Lora, meanwhile, virtually ignores her own daughter (Sandra Dee) in a single-minded quest for stardom. Legendary movie director Douglas Sirk's ("Written On The Wind" (1956), "All That Heaven Allows" (1955) last American film.
One of Hollywood's most memorable 4-hankie romantic drama masterpieces stars ultra glamorous Lana Turner in one of the major roles of her career that's she's best remembered for. The other being her prim and proper role as the screen's most notorious single mother in Grace Metalious' controversial "Peyton Place" (1957). "Imitation of Life" brings so much to the screen in it's story of two single mothers, one white and one black, who see the world in different respects to raising their daughters. Sandra Dee is her usual sweet and temperamental self as Lana's love starved daughter, and Susan Kohner (a Natalie Wood look-a-like) does a fantastic job as Juanita's light skinned daughter, who wishes Lana were her mother! Hollywood leading men John Gavin and Troy Donahue add some love interests to Lana and Sandra's lives and Gospel great Mahalia Jackson sings at a funeral in the film's grand finale!
I highly recommend "Imitation of Life" to classic romantic drama DVD collectors, especially fans of Lana Turner and Sandra Dee. And I also recommend Lana Turner's "Peyton Place," "Madame X," "By Love Possessed," and "Portrait in Black," with only "Peyton Place" currently available on DVD. Also check out Sandra Dee, with Troy Donahue in "A Summer Place," which is also available on DVD! So go ahead and pop in "Imitation of Life," kick back with some snacks and maybe even a few kleenex and see first hand what a true Hollywood soap opera is all about!
Movie Review: glossy, entertaining melodrama
Summary: 5 Stars
With a fabulous cast and well paced direction by Douglas Sirk, this melodrama succeeds on many levels, and surpasses the 1934 version as tear-jerking entertainment. Lana Turner is marvelous as the struggling single mother who becomes a movie star, and leads a stellar cast, which includes a brilliant, moving performance from Juanita Moore, as Lana's servant as well as friend. It's Juanita who will use up most of your hankies, and she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her work in this film (losing to Shelley Winters in "The Diary of Anne Frank"), and also gets some of the best lines, like "I'd rather be standin' with the lambs and not the goats on judgement day !"
Also nominated for Best Supporting Actress was Susan Kohner, who plays Juanita's daughter, and gets to play a short but wrenching scene (and quite shocking for its time, as this film deals candidly with racial issues) with Troy Donahue. As Lana's daughter, Sandra Dee is wonderful, and shows how good she was as a dramatic actress in her big scene with Lana.
Others in the cast include John Gavin as the man she loves, Dan O'Herlihy as playwright David Edwards, and Robert Alda as theatrical agent Allen Loomis.
The high point in this film for me comes in one of its final scenes, with Mahalia Jackson's sublime rendition of "Trouble of the World".
This adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel was a huge box office hit, and was Sirk's last film (and one of a handful that he directed that did not star Rock Hudson), and it might also be his best. The cinematography by Russell Metty is rich and colorful, and Lana is gorgeous in a sumptuous array of Jean Louis gowns. This was Lana's first major production after the scandal that rocked Hollywood, the slaying of her lover by her daughter, and it was feared that the infamous event had damaged her career, but this film turned out to be one of her biggest successes, and also made her very wealthy, as she opted for 50% of the profits instead of a salary.
Total running time is 124 minutes.
Movie Review: Even before MLK at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is completely different in many ways from all the others because it reaches an extremely high level of density, a tremendous depth of compassion and empathy. The film is centered on four women, two mothers and two daughters. One mother is white and an actress with a great career. The other woman is black and a servant to the actress all her life. The drama is double for the four women. The daughter of the white actress falls in love with the man who waited for her mother to be ready to love him and finally gets the prize he had been expecting for so long when the daughter finally lets the world know, discreetly, that she is in love with the man her mother is going to marry. The second drama is that the white daughter of the black mother is ashamed of being black and wants to escape that fate, that ordeal, that curse. She breaks the heart of her mother of course but her mother lets her go and do what she wants, be a chorus line girl in Hollywood. The film is extremely sentimental and effective. It is heart raking, heart breaking and even more than that. Yet the film is cruelly to the point in the present period when the racial question is coming back to the foreground. Can anyone escape one's racial descent? Of course not? Can anyone reject another human being or even judge another human being only because that other human being is black? Of course not. But can anyone aim at being what they are not and behave as white if they are black, and vice versa? Of course not. The question, the very problematic should not even exist in our minds. The closing scenes of the film after the death of the black mother cannot be told in any way. You have to see them. One thing is sure Sirk knows how to stir, move and exacerbate his audience's feelings and the lesson is received one hundred percent. The last ten minutes of that film are just a beauty of cinematographic art.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Movie Review: My Favorite All Time Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
I am in my 50's, and although I first saw this movie while still a teenager, it has remained my favorite movie of all time. A story of two strong women, one white, one black, who become accidental friends out of compassion and necessity during a racially predjudicial time. While Lana Turner (Lora) and Sandra Dee (Susie) are the "stars" of the movie, in reality it is Juanita Moore (Annie) and Susan Kohner (Sarah Jane)who were rightfully nominated for Academy Awards and have kept me fascinated with the movie for the last 40 years. These two loving mothers, Lora, a struggling starlet and Annie, an honest homemaker, meet when their young daughters, Susie and Sarah Jane, bond while playing together on the beach. The kind-hearted Lora takes the homeless Annie and Sarah Jane home with her and Susie "for the night", but Annie proves invaluable to Lora so that she and her daughter can remain indefinitely, and the four quickly fall into a comfortable dynamic. Lora chases her dreams and supplies a roof over their heads, while Annie does the "heavy lifting" by running the household with virtually no money and being primary caregiver to both girls. As the years pass, these four become a loving, if somewhat unconventional family as Lora reaches her goals of fame and fortune, allbeit sometimes at the expense of her relationship with Susie, and Annie continues to "work for her keep" long after the necessity is gone. As Susie grows to young adulthood with money and privilege, Sarah Jane, unwilling to endure the unfairness of racial predjudice, constantly breaks her mother's heart as she "passes" as white and even cuts all ties with her obviously "not white" mother. In my opinion, this is the reason this movie is so compelling and remains timeless. And, if you do not shed tears at the end of this movie, you're just not human. This is definitely a classic, and I can't believe anyone would be sorry they purchased it. In fact, I think I'll go watch it again.