Imitation of Life

A hit from 1959 that did not receive critical acclaim at the time was Imitation of Life, which was Douglas Sirk's last major film as a director. Sirk was known for his melodrama's of the 1950s, usually involving women's issues and over-saturated with color. He was largely derided during his career by critics, but has experienced a rethinking by subsequent generations.

Imitation of Life is a remake of a film from 1934 that was one of the first to depict African Americans as complex characters and not just maids or shoeshine-boys. That films reflects certain attitudes from the time period, as does the 1959 version, which was forward-thinking for its time but is now wince-inducing. One of the critics contributing to the supplemental DVD documentary calls it one of the greatest American films ever made. To that I say WTF?

The story begins when two single mothers meet at the beach at Coney Island. Lana Turner is a widow who aspires to be an actress, and has moved to New York City with that goal. She has a six-year-old daughter. Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore) is the mother of Sarah Jane. Annie is African American and appears that way, but Sarah Jane is extremely fair complected, and Turner assumes that Annie is her nanny. Moore explains that her father was very fair, but abandoned the family, and they have no place to live. Turner reluctantly takes them in for a night, but it will turn out to be a life-long relationship.

Moore, it turns out, is the perfect maid, and this is part of the problem with the film. The performance is very good, but I was annoyed that Annie is given very little interior life. She is like some sort of super-domestic, an Aunt Jemima type that is the perpetuation of a fantasy stereotype that whites had about blacks dating back to slavery--they are put on this Earth to cater to white people's needs. Late in the film Moore tells Turner that she has hundreds of friends, and is the member of her church and two lodges. Turner says "I had no idea," and Moore responds, "You never asked." It's a telling line, a cutting to the quick of a white audience who didn't think twice about the hired help, but also applies to the film itself, which has up to that point ignored Annie except as a plot device.

The meat of the story involves Sarah Jane and Susie. Turner becomes a successful actress, and we flash forward to when the girls are teenagers, and now played by Sandra Dee (Susie) and Susan Kohner (Sarah Jane). Dee is bubbly and irrepressible, but also wounded by the inattention of her ambitious mother. The career aspirations of Turner are treated as a character flaw--her on-again off-again boyfriend (John Gavin) at one points orders her to give up her dreams, which I'm sure ticked off Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.

Sarah Jane's problems with her mother are worse. Because she can pass for white, she wants to leave behind the struggles of a life as a black person, but that means denying her mother. There are instances when others learn she is black and turn on her (particularly a lurid scene with Troy Donahue, who slugs her when he finds out she's black) so she escapes from her dutiful mother, breaking her heart.

This film is more interesting as a social document that as good cinema. The melodrama is ladled on thick, and is often cringe-worthy. Annie's deathbed scene is especially excruciating, like something out of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Through all the suds there occasionally are some well-done scenes, such as the one where Annie tracks down Sarah Jane to a Los Angeles nightclub to say goodbye, but the gauze surrounding these scenes is hard to penetrate.

Moore and Kohner were nominated for Oscars. It's interesting that in the 1934 version, a light-skinned black woman, Fredi Washington, played the daughter, but in 1959 they got Kohner, who was part Mexican, part European. Any good intentions seemed to undercut in that casting. Kohner quit the business a few years later to raise a family. Her kids are Chris and Paul Weitz, Hollywood directors responsible for films like American Pie and About a Boy.