Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 22-August-04
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Imitation of Life (1959)
When "Far From Heaven" came out two years ago, critics hailed it as a marvelous revisiting of the lush dramatic style of Douglas Sirk. I also praised the picture, but as a revelation, because I had never seen any of Sirk's classic sob stories from the 1950s. Now I have filled that gap in my cinematic experience; and although I found "Imitation of Life" inferior to "Far From Heaven," it reminded me why I so admire that film. Even while weaving tangled webs of love, racism, friendship, and injustice in a very stylized, melodramatic fashion, both movies remain real enough to elicit genuine emotion. They're larger-than-life to a degree that makes them delicious, but they're true-to-life to a degree that makes them devastating.
"Imitation of Life" (a remake of a 1934 film) stars Lana Turner as Lora Meredith, a small-town widow who moves to New York to pursue a career on Broadway. (Turner is perfectly cast, looking like she was born to wear diamonds and mink but possessed of solid acting chops as well.) In the opening scene, her daughter Susie befriends another single mom named Annie (Juanita Moore), a black woman whose child, Sarah Jane, is so pale-skinned that she commonly passes for white. Drawn together by mutual poverty and loneliness, Lora and Annie become roommates and end up remaining together for the next decade, sharing the fruits of Lora's eventual stardom and assisting each other with raising their daughters. The trials and triumphs of this feminine quartet provide many opportunities for anger, grief, and disillusionment, not to mention haute couture and scintillating social situations.
The bulk of the tale revolves around Lora's success as an actress, for which she repeatedly slights her true love (John Gavin) and her daughter (played as a teen by Sandra Dee). You consistently feel that she is setting herself up for a fall, so it comes as a somewhat disappointing surprise that she never really gets punished for her ambition. The more gripping storyline concerns Annie and Sarah Jane (played in later years by Susan Kohner). Whereas the mother placidly accepts the lower-class status of her race, the daughter longs for a release from the indignity of being black. This causes her to hide her heritage, spurn her mother in public, and eventually run away to a highly unpromising future.
At first glance, these women appear as two pairs, one negative and one positive: Lora and Sarah Jane, who strive to get ahead by acting and hurt others in the process; and Annie and Susie, who are more true to themselves and less demanding of the world around them. But closer inspection reveals that all four are guilty of imitating life. Even guileless Susie makes herself believe that she shares a mad passion with her mother's beau; even gentle Annie finally demands a show of the respect she never claimed throughout her life. Everyone wants to be something she's not, either chronically or occasionally, with grievous results or minor ones. So while you weep, as you're meant to, for Annie and her poor, mixed-up girl or the moments when Lora realizes she can lose as well as win, what really sticks with you is the reflection that we may all be play-acting through life, following a script we got from somewhere while neglecting potentially rewarding paths before us. "Imitation of Life" is a lavish, three-hankie weepy by a master of manipulation, but its (bitter)sweetness consists of more than just saccharine or sap.
Copyright © 2004 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
