Dec. 5 movie: Imitation of Life. Went over to Shayne's house on Sunday night to have dinner and watch the Lana Turner version of Imitation of Life. Great fun and a great movie. We almost didn't get to watch it because the DVD didn't arrive in time from Netflix. Visart had it on video, but it was an old, beat up video which Shayne's VCR didn't like. But Dave acted as tech support and got it working for us. (The funny thing is, the DVD finally arrived on Monday, the day after we watched the video! I would have watched it again with commentary, but there was none, no extras at all in fact.)
It was really interesting to watch it after both of us had just seen the Claudette Colbert version. They're both basically the same story: a white woman and a black woman become lifelong friends and raise their daughters together. I've heard that the Lana Turner version is considered one of the great melodramas and I certainly agree, it's one of the best I've seen.
The racial story was much more the focus of this version I thought, and portrayed much more graphically. For instance there's a really intense scene where the black daughter, Sarah Jane, has been passing for white and her white boyfriend finds out. He calls her the "n" word, beats her up and leaves her lying in a gutter with blood on her face. Jeez, nothing like that happened in the '34 version!
Shayne and I agreed that the Annie (Juanita Moore), the black woman in this version, was portrayed with more depth and personality than Delilah, the character in the first movie. Delilah was basically a mammy, not very smart, talking in a cringe-worthy dialect, and wanting nothing from life but to take care of her daughter and be Claudette Colbert (Bea)'s housekeeper. Like Hattie McDaniel in, well, a lot of movies. But more sweet and not as smart. Delilah and Bea are technically business partners, but really that means that Bea gave her a share of the profits because she came up with the recipe. Delilah doesn't actually have anything to do with the business, except cooking in the restaurant before they hit it big with the pancake mix.
In the later film, Annie is still Lora (Lana Turner)'s housekeeper, and in a way it's a step back because Lora is an actress so there's no business for Annie to be part of. But Annie does seem to have more of an independant life. There's a very telling scene where Annie mentions her friends, and Lora expresses surprise that she has friends. Annie says "You never asked," and goes on to say that she has hundreds of friends from her church, lodges and social clubs. The relationship between the two women is still totally one-sided, but this is presented as a failing on Lora's part. In the earlier film, it never seems to occur to anyone that Delilah would have a life of her own, or that Bea would care if she did. Even after they're rich, Delilah and her daughter still live downstairs in the servant's quarters. At least Annie and Sarah Jane have bedrooms upstairs with the family in Lora's house.
I wish that they had presented more life options for Sarah Jane, the daughter. The only alternatives she seems to have are to pass as white, or to date chauffeurs. There's no opportunity for her to better herself without denying herself. Shayne pointed out that there probably were very few opportunities for black women so in that way the movie was being realistic. I don't know a whole lot about racial politics of the 50s, but they lived on the outskirts of New York. It seems like there had to be a black community with professional opportunities there, if anywhere. But I guess the point was that Sarah Jane hated her heritage and didn't want to be part of a black community.
There's a whole other storyline in the movie about the conflict between Lora (Turner) and her daughter Susie (Sandra Dee), which I didn't write about because it's more typical melodrama fare. Lora's driving ambition for acting success makes her an absentee mother, Susie falls for Lora's love interest (Steve Archer, the only name that's consistent between the two movies), Steve wants Lora to abandon her career for him, blah di blah. It's an interesting story about people wanting things for the wrong reasons, and their relationships suffering because of it. But it's not as compelling as the Annie/Sarah Jane story. (Sandra Dee is too cute for words though. She was married to Bobby Darin; I wonder who's playing her in the Kevin Spacey biopic?)
I think that if you examine this movie from a modern perspective on racial issues, there's a lot not to like and even to be offended by. But looking at it in the context of the time it was made, it must have been ground-breaking. Annie sums up the message of that part of the movie when she says "It's a sin to be ashamed of who you are."
The ending is a massive tearjerker, but I'm proud to say I managed to get through it with just a few sniffles. Usually by the time Mahalia Jackson sings, I'm bawling.
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Kate Bosworth (who I've never seen in anything) is playing Sandra Dee in the Bobby Darin movie. She'll look like Kevin Spacey's teenage daughter, I bet.
And - I've seen the Lana Turner version of Imitation of Life several times, and I swear almost nothing makes me cry as hard as the funeral scene. Well - maybe the scene at the end of Schindler's List when they're putting the stones on the real Schindler's grave, but that's a whole different thing.
I saw a promo for the movie and Bosworth does indeed look like Spacey's daughter, not his wife. Of course Sandra Dee really was a teenager when they married; it's Spacey who's way too old.
I have mixed feelings about this movie. Spacey obviously really loves Darin and it sounds like the movie wouldn't have happened with him. But that doesn't make him right for the part, which I don't think he is. Also I fear this will turn out to be another "vanity project" (Spacey is writer, director, producer, singer *and* star? did he do the lighting and makeup too?)