Cinema
Imitation of Life
Douglas Sirk · 1959
Synopsis
Coney Island, 1947. Lora Meredith, a white widow who dreams of Broadway, searches the beach crowd for her daughter Susie and finds her with Annie Johnson, a Black woman alone with her daughter Sarah Jane, of the same age. As Annie and the child have nowhere to go, Lora takes them in, and Annie keeps house. Over ten years, Lora becomes a star of the stage and her career draws her away from her daughter, while Sarah Jane, who has light skin, refuses to be taken for Black and passes for white.
Context
The film adapts a novel by Fannie Hurst already brought to the screen in 1934 by John M. Stahl, for the same studio; the heroine, a businesswoman in the book and in the first version, becomes an actress. It was Sirk's last Hollywood feature, and he afterwards co-signed only three short films with students in Munich. Poorly received by critics, who saw in it a sentimental soap opera, it was reassessed from the late 1960s, first in France, then by British critics and by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who visited Sirk in Lugano.
Who it is for
A melodrama of a hundred and twenty-five minutes, in Eastman Color, which follows over ten years two families brought together by the chance of a day at the beach.
Prizes and reception
Universal's biggest commercial success on its release, two Oscar nominations for best supporting actress, and added to the National Film Registry in 2015.
Sources for this page 10
The pages consulted to check this page.