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Before I saw this film I had no idea who Susan Kohner was.
She turns out quite a performance and I wonder why she didn't do more films. Sandra Dee as Ms. Turner's daughter is Sandra Dee playing a daughter -- you've seen it before. In the final scences when Susan Kohner's character does her "That's my momma Do not be surprised if some of them are yours. Start your free trial. Find showtimes, watch trailers, browse photos, track your Watchlist and rate your favorite movies and TV shows on your phone or tablet! Enjoy unlimited streaming on Prime Video. There was an error trying to load your rating for this title.
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Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. An aspiring actress befriends a black widow, but trouble arises when the latter is rejected by her daughter, who tries to pass for white. Watch This Week's Trailer Trailer. Todd Haynes top Ultimate Racial Tension Movie List. Share this Rating Title: Imitation of Life 7. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. The Films Women's Day: Nominated for 2 Oscars.
Learn more More Like This. All That Heaven Allows A Time to Love and a Time to Die Written on the Wind There's Always Tomorrow The Tarnished Angels Story of a friendship between an eccentric journalist and a daredevil barnstorming pilot. All I Desire In , a wayward mother re-visits the family she deserted. A peaceful New England town hides secrets and scandals.
The Bad and the Beautiful An unscrupulous movie producer uses an actress, a director and a writer to achieve success. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, Brussels Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: Lora Meredith John Gavin Steve Archer Sandra Dee Susie - 16 Susan Kohner Sarah Jane - 18 Robert Alda Nonetheless, any initial uncertainty the viewer may feel is likely to be reinforced by the subsequent scene in which Bea tells Delilah to assume an Aunt Jemimah pose 29 by way of modelling for her sign painter Henry Armetta , the extended medium close-up seeming to invite laughter.
And, soon afterwards, the film opens itself to the charge of racism in the scene where Bea and her recently appointed business manager, Elmer Smith Ned Sparks , try to persuade Delilah to lend her signature to the registration of the Aunt Delilah Corporation and thus to establish her right to a share of the profits. Are we to take it as endorsing him here or, as, arguably, was the case earlier with Bea, inviting us to see what he says as a sign of his limitations as a human being? His chief responsibility in the film appears to be the provision of comic relief, although he remains distinctly unfunny throughout.
The film bestows on him the profession of an ichthyologist no, really , but his appearance and demeanour identify him as the kind of playboy who regularly turns up in s screwball comedies. Their affair moves the film in a very different direction from the one taken by the novel.
By the time that Jessie played as an year-old by Rochelle Hudson returns home from boarding school in Switzerland, Bea and Stephen are talking marriage. She has to be given time to get to know him first, Bea has decreed. But then Jessie proclaims her love for him, inadvertently driving a wedge between her and her mother.
He sympathetically declines her advances, but the damage has been done. The novel ends with Bea left alone and desolate, watching Jessie and Frank move towards their future. And the force which creates this tragedy is nothing less than an American way of life, a national ideology that asserts that those whose skin is black are automatically inferior to those who are white.
It should come as no surprise to find the PCA raising objections to a work whose emotional power stems primarily from a critique of this. Even as they react differently to the situation, both are presented as victims of history, trapped by the ideology of their times. Through them, the film charts its irresistible social critique. She is a regular witness to the drama unfolding in her own home, always empathising with Delilah, sometimes silently watching on from the sidelines, sometimes intruding with advice for Peola.
If anything should ever come between us, it would kill me.
In the novel, agonisingly, Peola never returns. When she declined, Juanita Moore was offered the part. In interviews, Sirk appears to know nothing of this background.
The director believed that an update of the material was necessary in order to make it relevant to s audiences, 43 an era which had witnessed the birth of the Civil Rights movement: Sirk centre directing Karin Dicker for the opening scene of the version; Lana Turner to right of frame. By this time, the power of the Production Code had been considerably reduced, Breen had retired and been replaced by the more liberal Geoffrey Shurlock, and the miscegenation matter that had plagued Stahl in the early s was no longer perceived as an issue.
The setting is a packed Coney Island beach, Lora has lost sight of Susie, crosses paths with a camera-wielding Steve and eventually finds her daughter playing with Sarah-Jane as Annie calmly watches over them. The sequence lays the groundwork for much that is to follow, binding the four characters together and introducing the tensions that are to simmer away through all that follows: Annie is a prisoner of the mindset of her times.
The changes wrought on the black consciousness by the Civil Rights movement of the s still remain more than a decade away. But Sirk sharpens the focus on them with an unprecedented force and clarity. Sirk makes the idea of performance central to Imitation of Life. But an exasperated Susie sees right through her: Like mother, like daughter.
The scene is a heart-rending reversal of the one on the beach at the start, where Annie had proudly told Lora that this white-skinned little girl was her daughter. Imitations are everywhere in the film.
Further reading Douglas Sirk: Use film and TV in my classroom. Help comes in the form of Delilah Johnson, who agrees to work as Bea's housekeeper in exchange for a room for herself and her daughter Peola. Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: DVD Feb 10, "Please retry". Written on the Wind
Expanding on the possibilities of the title, virtually every scene has somebody engaged in one, adopting roles and helping others to play theirs according to the situations in which they find themselves. The same effect is achieved by having peripheral characters looking on as they unfold, a built-in audience.
Competing for attention, mirrors everywhere: When the aspiring actress first meets Loomis, the man who is to become her agent, she pretends to have been sent to him by a Hollywood producer. And then, after her act for his benefit has fallen apart, impressed by her chutzpah, he invites her to accompany him to a showbiz party, offers her a mink to wear and some advice about how she should act when she gets there.
Later in the film, by way of protest, a furious Sarah-Jane plays out a brutal caricature of a black maidservant after Lora asks her to help her mother serve food to guests. Annie is shocked, but Lora remains unmoved. She knows that he always makes multiple copies.