Now the second.
Imitation of Life was the 41st, 29th Hollywood and last feature film directed by Douglas Sirk, Danish born director who towered over Hollywood melodrama, noted by his distinctive colour palette and light and shadow treatment, and who, by the way, had the honour of inaugurating The MacMahonian in April 2014, with what was basically a rehashed and rather unremarkable comment for IMDB back in 2007 on Sirk´s 1949 Slightly French.
Imitation of Life tells a story analogous to that of the previous version, except the white mother is not an enterpreneuse but aspiring widowed actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) and she limits the exploitation of the black woman (Anita Moore) to domestic work.
Imitation of Life is foremost what they called back then a “vehicle”, designed to relaunch the career of Lana Turner, in which it succeeded. As for the rest, Sirk´s trademark lightning and palette are certainly visible, one might even say intrusive, and the accent is on the melodrama rather than on the social comment, mainly Lora´s wanton compromises to further her career and black daughter Sarah Jane´s (Susan Kohner) struggle to hide the fact that she is black, which she can´t because she isn´t. Kohner does manage to steal the spotlight from Turner on occasion, but the production team did its best to keep that to a minimum, because that´s not where the bucks were. Which is not to say that Imitation of Life is not striking, featuring that most distinctive of Sirk´s stylistic features: the portrayal of venal passions verging on sordidness with puritanical ellipse, in a subliminal hate letter to the society his films depict, moving us to both empathize with and despise their characters.
But all in all, Imitation of Life is no match to the previous version nor for most of Sirks´s previous output. And depressingly, racism in America seems in some aspects more reactionary here than 25 years previous. But it has to be stated to its credit that the film manages the admirable task of not being completely ruined by what has to be the most nauseating screen persona of the Golden Age of Hollywood: Playing Lora´s daughter Susie, Sandra Dee.