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Mood:
- EmotionalSentimentalTouchingStylized
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Plot:
- Single ParentSelf DiscoveryCouple RelationsFall in LoveInterracial RelationsLove AffairLove TriangleParents and Children more...
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Genres:
- DramaMelodramaRomance
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Time/Period:
- 20th Century50s
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Place:
- Island
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Audience:
- Girls' Night
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Style:
- TalkyStrong Female Presence
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Based on:
- Based on BookRemake
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Attitudes:
- SeriousRealisticSlow
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Imitation of Life, 1959
English
USA
Profile of Imitation of Life
The mood of Imitation of Life is emotional, sentimental, and touching. The plot centers around racism, a single parent, and social differences. It is a drama and romance movie. Stylistically, Imitation of Life is a melodrama, is talky, and stars a strong female character. In approach, it is serious and realistic. The pacing is slow. Imitation of Life takes place, at least partly, on an island. It happens in the 1950s. It is a remake and based on a book. Imitation of Life is especially suggested for a girls' night.
Summary of Imitation of Life
In Douglas Sirk's emotionally and visually extravagant final film Imitation of Life, a life's work of subverted melodrama and razor-sharp social commentary are brought to a resounding and baroque climax. In a role that closely resembles and perhaps parodies her own life, Lana Turner plays Lora Meredith, an aspiring actress and single mother who meets Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a black and similarly single and struggling mother. When they move in together, Annie assumes the role of domestic servant and the two women struggle together to raise their two daughters. Annie's daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), favors her father whose skin tone resembles her own extremely light skin, and she slowly comes to resent her mother's black identity. Transcending the feminist labeling that Imitation of Life risked, the film freely mixes Meredith's rags to riches (with a hefty moral price tag) tale with Annie's scarring struggles to teach her daughter to accept her identity. As Meredith climbs higher and higher in her glamorous rise to stage and screen stardom, she ignores her vulnerable daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) and creates a devastating contrast for the racial and social tragedy that transpires in her own household. With a deft mixture of icy detachment and morose sentimentality rendered through a transcendent art direction, Sirk leads the film onto an inimitable crescendo of highly adorned emotion and tragedy.
Details
| Language: | English |
| Country: | USA |
| Release date: | 17 April 1959 |
| Runtime: | 125 min |
Cast and Crew
as Lora Meredith
as Annie Johnson
as Steve Archer
as Sarah Jane, age 18
as Susie, age 16
Photos
Users Reviews
- 29.March.2010
- |
- by: Democritus
- Democritus rated this movie
0/10
