Imitation of life (1959)

Nobody cherishes the artificial like Douglas Sirk. Imitation of Life, a romantic drama, gets away with almost anything because of its undercurrents of subversive critique. Issues related to class, race, showbiz and gender are tackled through a cheesy drama about the aspiring actress, her maid and her romantic interest. As the film starts, Lora is a poor widow with a kid. On the beach, she meets Annie and her daughter Sarah Jane. The first question she asks about Sarah Jane makes it plain that the kid is assumed not to be her real daughter - she seems white. The two women become friends and Annie ends up living with Lora, who struggles to become an actress. Annie settles for the role of friend, extra-mother and maid as the other woman delves into her career and reflects on who is really Mr. Right. Lora quickly realizes that showbiz is not the glorious haven she thought it to be: she encounters greedy bosses who practically thinks of the actresses as prostitutes.

I think this story can be approached in two ways. One way would be to take issue with the racial and gendered stereotypes that it repeatedly reflects (there's the kind-hearted, almost saint-like confidant, a woman who settles with her fate as a maid, for example). Another interpretation is that Imitation of life uses the medium of the soap opera to dissect a number of roles created by a racist society, and that it thus looks at the kinds of conflicts - and the versions of self-deception - bred by that specific society. There's the saint-like maid, the striving white woman, the solid Man, the self-centered brat and the girl who wants nothing more than to pass as white. What the film would then be said to present is a rotten system, within which people's struggles and self-centered desires (or willingness to dedicate themselves to others) are formed. There are layers and layers of phoniness - remember that a major plot line revolves around the entertainment industry - but there is also life in the middle of that false consciousness. So, in this reading, Imitation of life circles around sacrifice, aspiration and shame as forms of racism and sexism. Perhaps this is an overly charitable understanding of the film, but I think one could make something of the conflicts in the film - and the things taken for granted as desirable - in that way. As a meticulous and gloomy study of societal wrongs, Imitation of life uses its lavish colors, its over-the-top acting and its overwrought story twists to make us look at the source from which these falsities stem.