Imitation of Life "I couldn't overcome the material. I don't really like this kind of picture."  -- Douglas Sirk (3) "A high-class pulp fiction. It's attitude toward its racial problem debased and compromised"  -- Monthly Film Bulletin, 1959, report in  (5) "This is a film about distances -- between people, between perception and the world, between form and feeling and, implicitly, between art and life.  It is a mammoth work, Sirk's last film, and his last project before he left America for good.  There is a sense in which this is a summary work."  (8) "The last film in Hollywood of director Douglas Sirk, 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. On one hand a '50s weepie and on the other a daring allegory, Imitation of Life is an unusual masterpiece."   -- Tom Keogh, amazon.com summary "Thus, Sirk's films are filled with some of the unhappiest happy endings ever recorded on film. Technically, life goes on and the assumption is that everyone lives happily ever after, but any thoughtful observation of the story's dynamics will alert the viewer to the unlikeliness of that ever occurring. The conclusion to Sirk's final film, Imitation of Life, provides the best example. It's a grand funeral procession, New Orleans-style, and all the principals are tearfully reunited as they drive off in a hearse into the future. There is the illusion of a family reunion, but we know in our hearts that these people can never resolve their conflicts. That the movie satisfied the demands of the formula, subverted conventional meanings, and was a box-office and critical sensation (two of its actresses were nominated for Oscars), says more about the filmmaking of Douglas Sirk than words can convey."  --  Marjorie Baumgarten My thoughts: go here
		Back:   Critics