Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2699 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-04-11
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The last film in Hollywood of director Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind), the 1959 Imitation of Life--an adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel--is an endlessly fascinating film that speaks volumes about the American journey toward materialism and the racial tensions that are inseparable from it. Lana Turner plays a white single mother and aspiring actress who takes in a black housekeeper (Juanita Moore) and her daughter (played by an adolescent Susan Kohner), the latter so light-skinned she passes for white. As the years pass and success mounts for Turner, Moore also becomes more comfortable but her status as a domestic never changes. Meanwhile, Kohner's character, chafing against social constraints, rebels at every opportunity and throws a wrench into the perfect order Sirk chillingly captures through the precise, architectural design of his images. On one hand a '50s weepie and on the other a daring allegory, Imitation of Life is an unusual masterpiece. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

THE MOTHER OF ALL TEAR-JERKERS
This is quite possibly my favourite film of all time. I have waited for years for this to come out on DVD.
Lana Turner is a joy to watch as the ambitious single mother who sacrifices her once close relationship with her daughter for fame. Juanita Moore is equally entrancing as her lifetime companion, who is disowned by an ungrateful daughter, ashamed of her black roots. The women and their daughters are thrown together by loneliness and go on to share an unbreakable bond.
The male supporting roles are also excellently played, but the screen belongs to Turner and Moore.
Unforgettable cinema magic.

Keep a handkerchief ready!
A lovely tearjerker in beautiful colour. Lana Turner is fabulous, and relative newcomer Juanita Moore gives her a run for her money, stealing a few scenes with warm dignity.

Made in 1959, this film forms a link from the 'women's films' of the 1940s to today's 'chick flicks'. There is Feminism here, before anybody used the word. Friendship between women is an important theme running right through film. Career is more important to the main character than romance for much of the movie, and she does carve out a very successful living as an actress on Broadway. The racial issues in the plot are dealt with as openly and sensitively as they could have back then.

You can call it sentimental and maybe you are right, but it really hits the spot. I defy anyone with a heart not to be moved when Mahalia Jackson sings.

"It's a sin to be ashamed of what you are - and it's a sin to lie about who you are."
Made in 1959, Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life is still just as evocative and as gorgeous to look today as it was almost 50 years ago. It's a real cinematic treat, shameless tearjerker, and an unabashed melodrama that dares to confront head-on issues of racism and the problems of motherhood at the stage when one's teenagers - in this case daughters--are growing up and preparing to enter the world.

Lana Turner has never looked more ravishing as Lora Meredith, a young New York widow who will do anything to realize her dreams of Broadway stardom. Together with her young daughter Susie, they live in a squalid apartment eking out a hand-to-mouth existence, their futures fuelled by unfulfilled dreams.

One day at Coney Island, Lora and Susie meet another a white girl Sarah Jane, who is being taken care of by a black woman, Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), whom Lora mistakes for the maid. When told by her that she's the mother, the surprised Lora falters but then accepts it without a question as if it were a natural thing that a black woman has a white child.

The angelic and virtuous Annie asks Lora if she can come and help out around the apartment. Lora is initially hesitant - not because of Annie's race but because she's struggling and doesn't have any money to pay her a wage. Eventually, however, she relents and tells Annie that her and her daughter can stay for one night.

At the same time, Lora meets the extremely fine-looking wannabe photographer, Steve Archer (John Gavin). Steve takes an instant liking to Lora and offers to marry her. But Lora is far too concerned with realizing her acting dreams to be stifled by a man and by marriage. Meanwhile, the saintly Annie is troubled that her daughter is ashamed of being black and tries to pass herself off in school as white.

Imitation of Life follows these characters throughout their lives, with Sirk piling on the sentiment and melodrama every chance he can get. Lora does indeed become a famous Broadway actress, yet neglects her growing daughter in the process. Steve goes on to become a president of a large photographic organization, but has trouble relating to Lora's need to be independent and famous.

Annie's heart is eventually broken, gradually worn down by years of emotional abuse from her daughter. Sara Jane is so angry at being labeled as black that she repudiates her mother and ultimately runs away. Annie always stays the subservient and loyal maid; whilst her best friend and employer goes on to bask in a lush and international success. The contrast of the mother's compensations from their conflicting daughters is the story's ultimate paradox.

Lora, Annie, Steve and the two girls seem to be victims of each other. They all want to follow their own dreams and forge their own paths in life even when it doesn't seem to be doing them much good. They are also surprisingly oblivious of how manipulated they are by the world around them. Lora gets her career but she's unlucky in love and terminally insecure as a mother, Whilst Sara Jane - perhaps the most damaged character - achieves her ambition to pass herself off as a white girl, but at great personal cost to both her and her aging mother.

Under Douglas Sirk's accomplished direction, Miss Turner et al act ornately and elaborately, everything is over emphasized to within an inch of its life, especially Lana's gorgeous outfits, yet the film - clocking in at over two hours - is always compelling and is never boring.

The screenplay is sophisticated, the themes are brave and tempting and the look of the film - the brilliant surfaces, audacious colors, and the spatial complexities of 50s moderne architecture - bring to the forefront a bittersweet world of fantasy, entrapment, and emotional anxiety, and where the price of following one's dreams eventually comes at a harsh and desultory cost.