Customer Reviews

Imitation of Life 34 & 59

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was very excited to hear about the release of the two versions of Imitation Of Life together on the same DVD. I had never seen the 1934 version and found it to be an equally enjoyable film as the 1959 one, although quite different (the main character is an entrepreneur versus an actress in the '59 version). The transfer for the 1934 version is decent considering it's age. I was more disappointed with the 1959 one. Granted, it was filmed in Eastman Color so one could not expect Technicolor brilliance, but the transfer is grainy and faded. To make matters worse, the layer change occurs at the worst possible place, as someone is running down the stairs (as with all DVD's, there is a slight pause at that time). This is very jarring; what was the engineer thinking? Layer changes ideally should be placed between a fade-out and a fade-in of scenes. Considering the price and the content, I would reccomend this DVD if you can ignore it's flaws.

Both John Stahl's 1934 version of "Imitation of Life" and Douglas Sirk's 1959 adaptation are tales of racism and the shame that befalls a young malato girl who denies her black heritage. Based on the novel by Fannie Hurst, Stahl's quiet understated approach to the subject matter is less heavy handed in its use of melodrama than Sirk's (though Sirk is widely regarded as the master in this medium). To be sure, Sirk amplifies the melodrama to underscore racial prejudice and materialism but, to the contemporary eye, his exaggerations seem more garish than genius, more indoctrinated than inspired.
THE TRANSFERS: Stahl's B&W photography holds up remarkably well. But Universal's transfer is rather weak in spots, showing considerable signs of age throughout. Contrast levels are unusually low while black levels are weak. Fine detail is lost in film grain. The B&W film is presented full frame - as it should be.
Sirk's color version is a genuine visual disappointment. Colors are faded, dated and muddy. There is a haze across many of the scenes taking place outside. Film grain is excessive. Many scenes appear overly soft to down right blurry. There's a bit of smearing and bleeding of colors in several scenes. Contrast levels are weak. Fine details disappear during the darkest scenes and are never fully realized in brightly lit scenes either. This version is anamorphic widescreen as it should be. The audio for both films is BIG FAT MONO.
EXTRAS: None.
BOTTOM LINE: Not a very impressive effort from Universal to say the least. There's little to recommend the films as such. The transfers are entirely forgettable.

The later version of Imitation of Life has been a favourite since I took a sick day in my early teens. I had watched it a couple of times since then, but decided to buy it for Christmas holiday movie marathons. The discovery of an earlier version of the same movie within the same jewel case was a bonus.
Both movies are great and show well as two separate but very similar movies.

Everytime someone ask me what is my favorite movie and I tell them "Imitation of Life" and they are amazed. Why do I say this movie? The story is amazing and I love how the Mother is loving and caring to her daughter inspite of her daughter's rejection of her race and her mother. I love the relationship between the mothers and the daughters. This movie is a must have.

I love the movie Imitation of Life. Although I had never seen the 1934 version before, I loved just as much I did the 1959 version. I watch this movie all the time and think that it's a movie that everyone should see. The message that the movie shows just how hard and the lengths that people will go to fit in into a society that tells them that they must look and act a certian way. This is a item that everyone should have in their DVD collection and I reccommand it to everyone.

Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life is a parody of an earlier film by John Stahl. The film portrays a struggling white actress who befriends a homeless black woman, and they end up living together. The black woman, Annie, takes on the rols of maid, servant, and nanny for the white woman Miss Laura and her daughter Susie. Annie's daughter Sarah Jane is half white, and throughout the film we see her attempt, time and time again, to "pass" as a white girl. Through the technique of gestic acting, or over acting, certain themes and messages in the film are impressed upon us over and over again. Miss Laura, for example is a struggling actress looking for work. She seems to be the picture of beauty and femininity. In John Berger's book, "Ways of Seeing,"he brings up the notion of the surveyor and the surveyed. This refers to the manner in which women are looked at and watched by the male eye. They then internalize that look and begin to see themselves as men want them to be, and begin to act accordingly. Throughout the film, we watch Miss Laura being surveyed, and eventually we see her internalize the look. At first she is watched and photographed by her future love interest Mr. Steve. He takes a picture of her at the very beginning of the film when she has lost her daughter and is frantically searching for her. In his picture she is a concerned mother. There are very few times in the film when Miss Laura seems to actually think about Susie. Mr. Steve, though, has framed her as a mother and wife from the very start. There is part of her that wants to fit into Mr. Steve's vision, but she first feels that she must pursue her career. Later on in the film Miss Laura and Mr. Steve are reunited. It is at this point when Miss Laura internalizes Mr. Steve's vision and begins to survey herself as she had been surveyed by Mr. Steve throughout the film. She gives up her career to become the housewife and mother that Mr. Steve had always seen her as. Another theme that become blaringly obvious in this film has to do with the intersection of race, class, and gender. We see this most clearly in Sarah Jane's character. In Smith's article she discusses the need to "pass" as a white person because of racism that is present in a dominantly white society, as well as in reaction to the discrimination against people of color. Sarah Jane struggles throughout this film, beause she has spent her life living in Susie's shadow. She sees all of the advantages Susie has because of her successful mother, and she is constantly jealous of her white privileged life. Try as she might, Sarah Jane can never break away from the intersecting characteristics that make her who she is. She tries to pass as
a white girl who is trying to make it on her own, but she cannot break away from her black roots. Thankfully this film is only an imitation of life and not the way that people really behave. The gestic acting is painful to watch but it does do the job of getting Sirk's messages across loud and clear.

On the surface, John Stahl's 1934 version of IMITATION OF LIFE and Douglas Sirk's later adaptation in 1959 appear quite similar. Based on the novel by Fannie Hurst (originally published in 1933), each of the two film renditions renders the story of a young woman divided between two worlds and her desperate search for her true identity. While Stahl's rather understated approach accomplishes the translation of Hurst's penetrating tale onto the screen with commendable proficiency, it is Sirk who improves upon it, amplifying the story into a masterful and illuminating social drama by exercising the devices of the melodrama to underscore and mine the significant issues of racial prejudice, fumbled motherhood, and materialism in American society in the 1950s.

Putting the "direct" in director, Sirk triumphs with his unabashedly frank portrayal of racial hatred in his adaptation. He also uses color to great and conspicuous advantage to identify the immense social divide between blacks and whites in the film. In deep contrast to the white hearse carrying Annie's body, the very white-appearing "family" of Lora, Susie, Steve, and Sarah Jane are relegated to follow from behind in a black limousine. The black versus white theme displays the opposing magnetic forces between which the biracial Sarah Jane finds herself caught. She is attracted to the white side of life but is naturally pulled toward the black side despite constant resistance. Ironically, only when she finally gives in to the latter's natural gravitational force is she positioned by default and virtually blended into the white domain, fundamentally due to the loss of her only perceptible black affiliation: her birth mother. (A fascinating point: This daughter's appearance at her mother's funeral is inspired by a similar scene in Stahl's version, but in fact the daughter in Hurst's novel doesn't return for the funeral; she has moved to Bolivia with a white man who has no clue about her black heritage).

Sirk also succeeds at accentuating the momentous tug-of-war between a woman's desire to have a successful career and her domestic accountability in the context of the 1950s. Sarah Jane possesses an ambition to get more out of life than what her hereditary role has assigned her, which makes her a lot like the career-ambitious Lora. Likewise, Susie is just as submissive to the cards life has dealt her as Annie is. Lora becomes an unwitting role model for Sarah Jane, and Annie an equally unwitting surrogate mother for Susie. Like Lora's emotionally empty acting career, Sarah Jane's sham of a white existence fails to provide her with the love she so desperately needs, something she eventually recognizes she cannot truly "live" without. For Annie, life in this fleshly world is a mere imitation of the real life that awaits her in Heaven. The exorbitance of Annie's funeral testifies to the emotional price paid with the loss of such a benevolent human being.

Because Sirk's production style is so excessively augmented, the messages concerning social issues that 1950s viewers would rather not face directly are discreetly concealed in a fashion that makes such propositions easier for them to swallow. Sirk's interiors are extremely over the top, and his exteriors are so fake one cannot help but know they are not real, providing the film with a sense of "magical unrealism." Only in this artificial sense of reality can viewers accept the contrived closure given to the social problems that embody the film's plot.

By riveting viewers' attention to the glamorous lifestyle Lora attains through career ambition, Sirk zeroes in on the genuine desires of women of the 1950s, particularly housewives or women who retreated from the workforce after WWII ended and their men returned home to resume their roles as the primary breadwinners. Having tasted the rewards of working outside the home, 1950s women dreamed of more than their contemporary home-based existence.

Ultimately, Sirk points out that people in life are forced to make choices based on the situations in which they find themselves. All people are, in some way, like Sarah Jane, stuck in a position wanting or needing more out of life than what has been provided freely. To obtain what they yearn for means sacrificing part of their own needs or wants. No one, he asserts, can realistically have it all, no matter how much they try to overcome the partitions that fabricate the very structure of society. Humans make choices in life based on what is most important to them. Annie believes life isn't much without the giving of love to the people around her. Like the message behind the theme song of Sirk's adaptation, Annie trusts in the notion that "every day would be gray and incomplete without the one you love." Lora seems to learn this truth about life near the end of the film, when she puts her career on hold so she can be with Steve and Susie on a full-time basis. (Interestingly, Hurst's novel ends with the white daughter falling in love with her mother's beau, much to the mother's horrific surprise.) Sarah Jane, however, learns this lesson too late, never to recover the time she could have spent bonding with her now-deceased mother.

Altogether, through his lavishly synthetic and ornate scenery, Sirk yields a high-pitched melody upon the dramatic canvas of life in his implosive acculturation of Hurst's tale of women struggling to find themselves in a complex world. In the end, he holds up his version of IMITATION OF LIFE as a mirror to his audience, showing them who they are and, perhaps more importantly, who they are not.

Finally both of these movies are released together. Most people do not even know the 1934 version exists. In my opinion the 34 version is the better of the two. Even though both are really over the top, at least the first version portrays the black and the white woman more as equals. The remake actually is more racist and condesending. The black woman in the original whose name is Delilah is a business woman not a maid. She is treated like a real person. Claudette Colbert who portrays the the white woman treats Delilah as a partner, her friends treat her equally. They actually try to talk to Delilah about her daughter and try to help her as a friend would not as a person who is pitied as in the remake. "Poor Annie" as Sandra Dee's character mentions. PLUS I find it insulting that in 1959 Hollywood could not find one black actress to play the part of the daughter, but way back in 1934 they did. Ferdi Washington. Delilah's job was not to take care of the white woman and her daughter. But in the 1959 version that was Annie's job. Also I like the story of the independent woman that the first version told. It is very strange how Hollywood has regressed. Because most movies would never be about a black and white middle aged single working women with almost grown daughters. The movie today would be more about the daughters then the mothers. Don't get me wrong the remake I enjoyed but more as a camp over the top melodrama and I do like the actress's in the roles. But the 1934 version was a better movie. The fact the the daughter tried to pass as white back in the 30's is more understandable then someone who would try to pass in the later version. I feel that is more out of self hatred and some bad parenting. But in 1934 even though it was not a right thing to do it might have been understandable given the times. In any case in both versions the daughters confusion was never dealt with. In the original it was mentioned that the father was high toned..a light skinned black person. I think in the remake I had the impression the father was white or "almost white". Maybe I should read the book. I took one star from these 2 movies bcause of the 1959 version. One last thing I love the fact that in the original version at the funeral in Harlem the film makers had the insight to include Marcus Garvey followers in the scene. They were a very big group in Harlem during the 30's and 40's. Marcus Garvey for people who do not know was a Jamaican who believed in black people being self sufficient and he had a back to Africa movement. I think the film makers of the original should be commended for putting in that little slice of Harlem's history in the movie.

At long last they have finally released these two gems together! I have ordered the two movie edition and can't wait to watch them back to back...I have long been a fan of the 1959 version, but it is the original which pulls at my heart mightily...Ms. Beavers is brilliant as the heartbroken mother who suffers for her daughter and although dated by todays standards, the sentiments are still just as powerful and definitely worth seeing...P.S. Don't forget the kleenex!

Both versions of the Fannie Hurst book were filmed before the
Civil Rights and Black Power Movements so must be viewed with
that in mind.must have been controversial. The 1934 version is
quite dated now but was probably controversial at the time. Louise Beavers is magnificent as
the mother whose heart is broken by her light-skinned daughter who
wants to pass in the white world. Had times been different, she
might have beaten Halle to the Oscar by 70 years instead of being
relegated to 5th billing. Fredi Washington as her daughter is also escellent.
The 1959 version features a magnificent performance by Juanita Moore who received
an Oscar nomination for her work. This is more than a glitzy
Lana Turner weeper. Douglas Sirk use of color is fantastic and
even if the movie is hokey you can't stop watching. This double
bill is great for collectors who wish to have both versions.