Imitation of Life is a 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst that tackled issues such as race and class and was adapted twice: one in 1934 and another in 1959. For a premise that prides itself on exploring race, however, there really wasn't much focus on the black characters.
For this post, I'm going to focus on the 1959 adaptation, but I believe the 1934 version holds some merit in considering this film.
The plot follows two single mothers and their daughters: Annie Johnson, a black maid, and her daughter Sarah Jane, whose skin is so light she often "passes" as white. It also follows Lora Meredith, a wannabe actress, and her daughter Susie.
At the beginning of the movie, Lora takes in Annie as her maid, and she and Sarah Jane live with Lora and Susie while Lora begins to find roles within Broadway and develops a romance with Steve. Occasional scenes through the first part show Sarah Jane's internal struggle with her race, becoming angry with herself and her mother for their blackness while insisting she is white. Once Lora finds her first big role, an eleven-year time skip follows and Lora is rich and famous, living in luxury, while Annie is still her maid. The story continues fairly similarly as in the first half, with the addition of Sarah Jane running away to live a "white" life. The story ends with Annie's death and Sarah Jane's regret.
Fame stories have been told in Hollywood for decades, so the more interesting and unique story here was clearly the distress between Sarah Jane and Annie, but the movie placed much more emphasis on Lora and Susie and their love triangle with Steve, which was just... weird as a plot device in itself, but especially when compared to such severe subject matter as internalized hatred. Very little of the runtime, however, was dedicated to Annie and Sarah Jane. The vast majority focused on Lora and her career.
What little we do see is dedicated to Annie's life as a maid, caring for the same woman for over a decade. Nothing special there in my opinion. Something that's really interesting, though, is Sarah Jane's hatred for herself, her mother, and her race, but there isn't enough time given for them to flesh it out.
It's disappointing because I feel Annie had some very powerful lines.
My problem is that they aren't expanded on. There are no reasons given as to why it's so difficult for black people, why some of them hate themselves for it, and God knows some of the audience needs to see it, especially in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. More contexts and more insight into black life would have been nice. For example, I would have loved to see how Sarah Jane was treated by her peers before and after finding out she was black. We saw a little of this with her boyfriend, but it was only one scene and a fairly short one, and we only saw his reaction to her blackness and nothing about their relationship before.
Another quote is "it is nothing to be ashamed of" in reference to being black. This is another example of a beautiful quote that fails to be expanded on. The rest of the film, again, focuses almost solely on Annie as a loyal friend and maid while Sarah Jane denies her true self, but viewers don't get to see the wonders of black life. That is, we don't see ambition from Annie, acceptance from Sarah Jane, or even black culture (until the funeral scene, which is such a tiny sliver of the movie it barely counts at all).
Alongside these structural issues was the casting, and by extension, the acting, which I do not think helped the story at all. The 1934 version plays an important role in discussing this. Before I get to that, however, I should mention that the characters were renamed in the 1959 version.
Paola and Sarah Jane are the same characters. The casting is what is important here, though. Paola is played by a black actress while Sarah Jane is played by a white one, but they are both black characters.
Their roles are focused around wanting to pass as white, though, and the struggles that come with knowing they are actually black. The decision to cast a white actress to play a black role in the 1959 version plays into the neglect of the black stories that are already in the script because a white person can never understand what it is like to be black, so how can her portrayal be accurate? This was an incredibly sizable oversight on the casting and for the life of me, I cannot understand what they were thinking.
Even if the original movie had many of the same issues, Fredi Washington added a lot because she had some understanding of what the character actually was feeling because she had lived life as a black woman.
Washington's delivery in certain scenes was incredible, her big smile when working in a white store, her trembling lip and shaking voice when discussing her blackness, and her disgust with her mother are all noteworthy because they add depth to her feelings. Her performance felt so much more genuine, and I felt I could feel her internal hatred and remorse.
Susan Kohner just did not have that same experience so Sarah Jane, coming off as more of a jealous, angry teenager, suffered, and so did the story.
It's disappointing how in one of the few white movies that attempt to focus on race, its message is ultimately abandoned. I think the amount of time dedicated to the black characters should tell you enough about how this movie functions, let alone the casting decisions. It is a movie (in part) about race. It discusses race. But it neglects its black characters and black stories.
For white Hollywood at the time, this was undoubtedly very progressive, but I still think that it could have done more. Many of the topics mentioned by Better With Bob are good points, specifically the mammy stereotype (I would have liked to see more from Annie, but I understand and appreciate his insight as to why we did not) and Sarah Jane's feelings, but I feel like it wasn't enough and I don't personally believe they were handled as well as he claims. There wasn't enough time dedicated to expanding and explaining the stories and plotlines that had been set up.
Kudos to them for trying, but there is only so much that white people can know about black life so I don't think this should be held up as the "blueprint" of racial films.
I think this movie could have benefited from more time dedicated to the black stories, a black actress for Sarah Jane, and more black writers behind the scenes.
I enjoyed the movie in isolation, but its black characters and stories were not handled very well and I believe putting it on a pedestal simply for being "better" than other white movies at the time is not the right thing to do, because no matter how progressive it was, for a movie that prides itself on considering racial issues, it neglects its black stories, black characters, and black audience.
I agree with you that Annie in 1959 Imitation has some of the most powerful lines of the film. She says that Sirk took her aside and told her that she was the emotional center of the film, that if the audience didn't believe her, nothing else would work. Given the fact that it was a blockbuster--and the way we can see its limitations now--that's kind of interesting to think about, isn't it?
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