Imitation of Life (1958)
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Reviews Counted: 23
Fresh: 19 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.8/10
Critic Reviews: 6
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.2/5
User Ratings: 9,013
My Rating
Movie Info
This glamorized remake of the 1934 film Imitation of Life bears only a passing resemblance to its source, the best-selling novel by Fannie Hurst. Originally, the heroine was a widowed mother who kept the wolf from the door by setting up a successful pancake business with her black housemaid. In the remake, Lana Turner stars as a would-be actress who is raising her daughter on her own. She chances to meet another single mother at the beach: African-American Juanita Moore. Moore goes to work as
Jan 1, 1958 Limited
Jan 7, 2003
Universal Studios
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Cast
-
Lana Turner
Lora Meredith -
John Gavin
Steve Archer -
Juanita Moore
Annie Johnson -
Sandra Dee
Susie (older) -
Dan O'Herlihy
David Edwards -
Robert Alda
Allen Loomis -
Susan Kohner
Sara Jane (older) -
Mahalia Jackson
Herself -
Karen Dicker
Sara Jane (younger) -
Terry Burnham
Susie Meredith at 6 -
John Vivyan
Young Man -
Lee Goodman
Photographer -
Ann Robinson
Show Girl -
Troy Donahue
Frankie -
Sandra Gould
Receptionist -
Joel Fluellen
Minister -
Jack Weston
Stage Manager -
Billy House
Fat Man -
Maida Severn
Teacher -
Than Wyenn
Romano -
Peg Shirley
Fay -
George Barrows
Furniture Mover -
Myrna Fahey
Actress -
Bess Flowers
Geraldine Moore -
Eddie Parker
Policeman -
Napoleon Whiting
Kenneth -
David Tomack
Burly Man -
Paul Bradley
Preston Mitchell -
-
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All Critics (23) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (20) | Rotten (4) | DVD (4)
Imitation of Life is still a potent onion. When passed before the moviegoer's eyes, it may force theater owners to install aisle scuppers to drain off the tears.
Top CriticWhile this device lends more scope, it also results in the overdone busy actress/neglected daughter conflict.
This modernized remake of Miss Hurst's frankly lachrymose tale is much the same as its soggy predecessor. It is the most shameless tear-jerker in a couple of years.
Forget those who decry the '50s Hollywood melodrama; it is through the conventions of that hyper-emotional genre that Sirk is able to make such a devastatingly embittered and pessimistic movie.
Douglas Sirk's 1959 film was the biggest grosser in Universal's history until the release of Airport, yet it's also one of the most intellectually demanding films ever made in Hollywood.
You'll be horrified at how this hokum manipulates you, but the best strategy is to just surrender and enjoy it.
A consummate display of populist weepie-making.
[VIDEO] Set in postwar New York, "Imitation of Life" is a wonderfully deceptive film.
What [the characters] need most from their maker is something he couldn't have given them at the time: the 1960s.
Glossy soaper ahead of its racially themed time.
Douglas Sirk's last Hollywood film is the jewel in his crown, a visually audacious, powerfully acted melodrama, with Lana Turner and Juanita Moore in top form, that was misunderstood and dismissed at the time as just a weepie or soap opera.
Sirk immediately and deliberately acknowledges the film's metaphoric, almost pathological obsession with surfaces.
Review Imitation Of Life is another of those Douglas Sirk melodramas that no critic had a good word to say about at the time of their release but are now widely considered movie masterpieces.
The film is a biting critique of American race relations in the Fifties and a complex study in contrasts and paradoxes.
The ultimate Sirk film, the contradictions breaking the back of the melodrama genre for all time and Sirk gobbling up and spitting out his Hollywood career like a badger devouring its young.
Audience Reviews for Imitation of Life
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Lora Meredith: I'm going up and up and up. And no one's going to pull me down. [ambitious actress telling husband she's no housewife]
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Foreign Titles
- Solange es Menschen gibt (DE)
- Mirage de la vie (FR)
