{"id":9044,"date":"2010-04-26T18:52:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T02:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9044"},"modified":"2010-04-26T21:20:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T05:20:18","slug":"imitation-of-life-douglas-sirk-1959-usa-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9044","title":{"rendered":"Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at the TCM Film Festival in Hollywood, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Director Douglas Sirk is best known for his melodramatic films of the 1950’s which dealt with social prejudices, shallow desires, unrequited love and spoiled offspring.<\/p>\n

Imitation of Life <\/a><\/em>\u00a0involves two working mothers, one white and one black, both single and raising daughters.\u00a0 Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) aspires to\u00a0advance from part-time model to full-time stage actress,\u00a0 while Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore) is desperately in need of a place to live, as well as a job.<\/p>\n

Lora is near panic when she loses sight of her young daughter at the Coney Island boardwalk, but Annie\u00a0has kindly sat with the child until they are both\u00a0reunited.\u00a0 Fast becoming friends, Annie and her daughter are invited to stay with Lora and her child in\u00a0their small apartment, exchanging household duties for room and board.<\/p>\n

Moving ahead ten years, Lora becomes\u00a0a highly sought after stage actress,\u00a0while\u00a0her daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) is preparing to\u00a0graduate high school.\u00a0 Annie is very much a part of the family, even\u00a0acting as a\u00a0surrogate mother to Susie since Lora is\u00a0consumed with her career.\u00a0\u00a0Since Annie’s own daughter (fair-skinned)\u00a0Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner) has come of age,\u00a0she struggles with her mother’s blackness.\u00a0\u00a0Longing to live within the white world in which she was raised,\u00a0Sarah Jane abandons the love of her mother for the life of a chorus girl in a seedy nightclub.<\/p>\n

Lana Turner, the queen of melodrama,\u00a0 excels as Lora Meredith, and\u00a0yet regardless of\u00a0how much the camera truly does love her, it is Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore which equally steal every scene they are in.\u00a0 Both deliver standout performances as mother and daughter, who, despite a mutual love, can never come together and achieve what they most want from each other.\u00a0 No surprise, Kohner and Moore each received an Oscar nomination\u00a0as Best Supporting Actress for their respective\u00a0roles.<\/p>\n

Sirk’s most popular films were considered chick-flick soap operas, and panned by critics, but were\u00a0well-received by audiences.\u00a0 Imitation of Life became\u00a0the most lucrative film to date\u00a0for Universal, and was in fact a remake from their\u00a0 own 1934 John Stahl version.<\/p>\n

Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore joined\u00a0Robert Osborne for a Q & A session after this screening\u00a0at the TCM Film Festival.\u00a0 The audience enjoyed the candor between our wonderful host and these two\u00a0great actresses, it was apparent that both had stayed friends these many years and\u00a0they each\u00a0had to agree that their roles in Imitation of Life were the juiciest of their careers.\u00a0 Screened at the Egyptian, there is nothing quite like watching the close-ups of all\u00a0these wonderful actors up on the big screen.<\/p>\n

Although I do not readily concede to\u00a0film remakes, there are a few instances where the remake will\u00a0honor its predecessor rather than bring shame, and\u00a0perhaps even eclipse the former.\u00a0\u00a0These are a few examples which\u00a0come to mind: \u00a0Little Women (1949), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and An Affair to Remember (1957).\u00a0 Having seen both versions of Imitation of Life several times, (and in this instance) it’s a tough call, but I’d have to say Sirk’s version tips the scales.\u00a0 Both versions are available on DVD from TCM, and both worthy of screening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at the TCM Film Festival in Hollywood, CA. \u00a0 Director Douglas Sirk is best known for his melodramatic films of the 1950’s which dealt with social prejudices, shallow desires, unrequited love and spoiled offspring. Imitation of Life \u00a0involves two working mothers, one white and one black, both single and raising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-tcm-film-festival-2010"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}