Genre Country Director Actor

Imitation Of Life

Douglas Sirk, 1959

Star Review

Opening with a cascade of ersatz diamonds spilling over the credits, this is one film where appearances are wholly deceptive. On the surface, it is a glossy weepie about the relationship between an actress, her black maid and their two troubled children. Behind the sheen, however, there lurks a bitter mediation on racism, class and injustice.
The maid's daughter (an incendiary Susan Kohner) is half-caste and can pass for white. She is desperate for her heritage to be kept a secret, and continually tries to distance herself from her loving mother. This being a Douglas Sirk film however, it is this misfit who emerges as the film's most sympathetic character, and the selfish actress (Lana Turner, whose plastic quality is brilliantly used by Sirk), thriving on the dramatic, who remains the film's implicit villain.
The tremendous finale, at the lavish funeral of a major character, features the most unconvincing happy ending in Hollywood history - as Sirk himself stated "you don't believe the happy end, and you're not really supposed to." A brilliant slice of vicious melodrama.

Alex Davidson on 6th October 2006

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