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I watched Douglas Sirk's last movie, Imitation of Life (based on a novel by Fannie Hurst) over the weekend. I remember my mother giving me a quickie outline of the plot when I was a kid (as she did with all the original Twilight Zone episodes on too late for me to watch).
It's a very interesting melodrama (made in 1959) that begins in 1947. It's about two single mothers, one white and widowed who has come to New York to become an actress and one black (I don't recall being told what happened to her husband) who with her little girl has been a maid but is currently homeless. They move in together, with Annie (Juanita Moore, nominated for the Academy award in this role)taking care of the apartment while Lora (Lana Turner) looks for work.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but the story and interactions are complex and deal with women and their correct place in the world (John Gavin, the love of Lora's life, wants her to quit trying to be an actress and stay at home with the kid and him but she keeps breaking away--and is at one point told she's been a bad mother). Also, mother and daughter relationships and most important, race.
Far more interesting and unsettling (and tragic) than both the feminist issues of the movie is its racial components. Annie Johnson sees herself as a maid and although her fortune rises --to an extent--with Lora's, she remains someone taking care of Lora and her child throughout--and becomes a martyr figure. She is barely seen to have a life of her own and certainly no suitor.
What raises the whole movie into tragedy and creates a, not sure what to call it, a dialog... or brings up deeper issues is this: Annie's little girl, Sara Jane is 8 and Lora's daughter, Susie, is 6 at the beginning of the movie. Sara Jane is very light skinned and from almost the start, once she and her mother go to live with Lora and Susie we can see that she desperately wants to be white.
The 16 year old Susie is Sandra Dee (who looks sooo young) and the 18 year old Sara Jane is Susan Kohner, who is fabulous (she was also nominated for an Academy Award for her role).
Over the next ten years Sara Jane not only begins to resent her mother but she starts passing as white, which forces her to reject her mother. Her mother comes to her school to bring her boots when it's raining and initially being told that her daughter is not even attending the school (the administration sees a black woman coming to what must be an all white school), when Annie finds Sara Jane's class and enters it calling to her daughter, Sara Jane is humiliated --and worse than that --is immediately ostracized by her classmates, who up until then apparently accepted her as one of them. That's only the first time we see the consequences of "passing" for the daughter and for the mother. And it only gets worse.
Although there were plenty of other scenes that are meant to be tearjerkers the only one that really got me was the very last.
It's a very interesting melodrama (made in 1959) that begins in 1947. It's about two single mothers, one white and widowed who has come to New York to become an actress and one black (I don't recall being told what happened to her husband) who with her little girl has been a maid but is currently homeless. They move in together, with Annie (Juanita Moore, nominated for the Academy award in this role)taking care of the apartment while Lora (Lana Turner) looks for work.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but the story and interactions are complex and deal with women and their correct place in the world (John Gavin, the love of Lora's life, wants her to quit trying to be an actress and stay at home with the kid and him but she keeps breaking away--and is at one point told she's been a bad mother). Also, mother and daughter relationships and most important, race.
Far more interesting and unsettling (and tragic) than both the feminist issues of the movie is its racial components. Annie Johnson sees herself as a maid and although her fortune rises --to an extent--with Lora's, she remains someone taking care of Lora and her child throughout--and becomes a martyr figure. She is barely seen to have a life of her own and certainly no suitor.
What raises the whole movie into tragedy and creates a, not sure what to call it, a dialog... or brings up deeper issues is this: Annie's little girl, Sara Jane is 8 and Lora's daughter, Susie, is 6 at the beginning of the movie. Sara Jane is very light skinned and from almost the start, once she and her mother go to live with Lora and Susie we can see that she desperately wants to be white.
The 16 year old Susie is Sandra Dee (who looks sooo young) and the 18 year old Sara Jane is Susan Kohner, who is fabulous (she was also nominated for an Academy Award for her role).
Over the next ten years Sara Jane not only begins to resent her mother but she starts passing as white, which forces her to reject her mother. Her mother comes to her school to bring her boots when it's raining and initially being told that her daughter is not even attending the school (the administration sees a black woman coming to what must be an all white school), when Annie finds Sara Jane's class and enters it calling to her daughter, Sara Jane is humiliated --and worse than that --is immediately ostracized by her classmates, who up until then apparently accepted her as one of them. That's only the first time we see the consequences of "passing" for the daughter and for the mother. And it only gets worse.
Although there were plenty of other scenes that are meant to be tearjerkers the only one that really got me was the very last.
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