DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog: IMITATION OF LIFE

Wednesday 20 February 2008

IMITATION OF LIFE


Imitation of Life (1934)
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, Warren William

***1/2

"Imitation of Life" is a classic Hollywood studio melodrama based on a popular Fanny Hurst Novel. It's a surprisingly powerful film about two women, - one black, one white - and their bond of friendship and family over 20 years. It was popular and critically acclaimed in its day, so much so it spawned a successful remake in 1959 with Lana Turner. But I had never heard of it until its recent DVD re-release. It's a film about time and place and so with today's eyes the stereotypical characterizations could be seen as offensive, but at the heart of the story is a seering emotional drama about racism and female empowerment that in 1934 was decades ahead of its time.

Claudette Colbert plays Bea Pullman, a widow with a young daughter Jessie. When she meets Delilah (Louise Beavers), a black woman, also widowed, with a child of similar age, they quickly strike a friendship of commonality. Delilah offers her services as a maid in exchange for room and board. Bea and Delilah soon go into business together and open a pancake restaurant featuring Delilah's secret pancake recipe (influenced by the Aunt Jemimah brand). Bea's career aspirations outpace her pocketbook, but that doesn't stop her from negotiating her way into buying and renovating a vacant store on credit. Over the course of many years the store expands into an internationally successful business making Bea and Delilah rich. But Delilah honourably retains her modesty and continues to serve Bea as her maid.

Despite the success Delilah's relationship with her daughter Peola becomes strained. Peola was born with light skin, which appears as white. Through her youth Peola's feels racist contradictions and embarassment of having a black mother. In her teenager years it becomes so extreme she leaves home to start a new life, with a new identity never to see her mother again.

These plot threads when written out and described seem more like daytime television than respectable cinema, but the story is never sensationalized. Director Stahl and his writers never give their characters a helping hand. We watch in a series of scenes Bea's guile and business-savvy in building her business from scratch. Bea and Delilah, despite all their family-hardships and personal struggles, never stray from their personal ethics.

Though the film was made 25 years before the Civil Rights movement the film is as liberal and empowering as anything to come out of that era - including "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", which I recently reviewed. At a glance Delilah can be seen as a stereotypical black maid - she is referred to as "Mammy" and speaks with a tongue now seen as racist. But she is a powerful figurehead for honour, stability and strength of character - elements much stronger than her stereotypes.

Delilah's final moments as she calls out for Peola is one of the powerful moments I've seen in film in a long time. The simplicity of her needs and emotions remind me of a John Ford film, and when Peola is reunited with her mother is a heartbreaker.

The new Universal DVD also contains the Douglas Sirk 1959 Technicolor version with Lana Turner. It's an interesting comparison - specifically since it was made 25 years after the original. Bea's character (renamed Lora) is put ahead of Delilah's character (renamed Annie). Sirk's film is more in line with his other 'women's melodramas', "All That Heaven Allows" or "Written in the Wind" - it retains the empowerment of the female lead, but the statement against racism and segregation is less powerful. The 1934 version is by far the better film. Enjoy.

"Imitation of Life - 2 Disc Set" is available on DVD from Universal Home Entertainment

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