BUSHRA
14Dec11
it's also i think seriously one of the best executed movies i've ever watched.
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Trevor
16Jan13
One of Sirk's richest masterpieces: cruel and cynical, but moving and gorgeous to behold. Perhaps the darkest film Sirk ever made about America, as well as a triumphant farewell to it. Sirk's social criticisms are extreme and pessimistic, but what makes this timeless is the human element at the heart of it, and Sirk remains one of cinema's most powerful purveyors of human nature at its most desperate.
Sudipto Basu
23Sep12
One of the most intricate portrayals of racial tension and gender politics I've seen. The best thing about Sirk's films is that you can read them on two levels - one, the film itself, and two, its making. The fact that a white girl is cast as Sarah Jane says something about race, doesn't it?
Daniel S. likes this
Pierluigi Puccini
29May12
A sweet and sour pie of the morality and values of it's time. Tasty, colorful in the outside, with so much hipocrisy, prejudices lurking inside. Its deep sensitive core could only be reached by Sirk's nobility. His lyrical and non judgemental treatment , helped by one of the best cinematographers that ever was, Mr. Russell Metty, and amazing performers.
HKFanatic likes this
Trolley Freak
19Feb12
The King of Melodrama ended his Hollywood career on an undoubted high with his most financially successful film. It's a classic rags to riches weepie which tells the story of two intertwined families over the course of a decade. Turner is the widowed aspiring actress who takes in a kindly black woman and her daughter after a chance meeting and employs her as a maid. A final magnificent masterpiece for Douglas Sirk...
crmantao likes this
Mr. Arkadin
15Jan12
But where did they put the pancakes!?!? Seriously though, Sirk's version is head-and-shoulders the better...
BUSHRA
14Dec11
i love the intensity of this movie and how well shaped and developed the characters were. just when you think everyone falls into an archetype, the character delves into a new transition which seems just as natural as who we thought they were before. take for example, lora's lust for power or sarah jane's deconstruction. i really also appreciate also how progressive this movie was civil rights era wise.
menencorio and EMMACHINO like this
Gerry Miriello
7Nov11
An emotional atom bomb. Juanita Moore and her daughter are the aching heart of the movie and the reason that it still touches us. Lana Turner and her daughter are just along for the ride. This is really subversive because I'm sure audiences thought this was a Lana Turner vehicle about the rise to stardom and evasive love story with Gavin, but it actually is a powerful document of 50s race relations in America.
Lauren
2Jul11
"Women think in Sirk’s films. Something which has never struck me with other directors. None of them. Usually women are always reacting, doing what women are supposed to do, but in Sirk they think. It’s something that has to be seen. It’s great to see women think. It gives one hope. Honestly." “All sorts of things can be told better about women. Men usually behave the way society expects them to.”-Fassbinder
MARK IS SUSPENDED IN GAFFA
30May11
As the title song tells us, a life without love is merely an “imitation of life”. Directed by Douglas Sirk, the film examines mother-daughter rivalry, tackles the issue of racism and weaves these themes into a beautiful, albeit confronting film, rich in pathos. Gritty for its time, somewhat melodramatic, with elements still potent today. A must-see. Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner feature.
EMMACHINO likes this
Arsaib
30Apr11
"A big crazy film about life and death. And a film about America . . . Not one of the protagonists realizes that all these things — thoughts, wishes, dreams — grow directly out of their social reality or are manipulated by it. I don't know any other film that shows this phenomenon so clearly and so despairingly." —Rainer Werner Fassbinder
HKFanatic and Mr. Arkadin like this
Zachary George Najarian-Najafi
21Aug10
It's like a bizarre suburban opera. I was laughing one minute and crying the next. Every scene just oozes genius.
richmondhill
9Apr10
Latter day Sirk with the emotional highs and wallows laid on with a spade (celestial choir and thumping piano chords to boot). As with his other so-called sly melodramas, there's a certain campy interest in the film - and it's certainly slick - but apart from the proto-liberal race plot line, there's not a great deal of subversion here unless you want to fill in the blanks yourself. Bad for your teeth.
Robert W Peabody III
18Nov09
Imitation of Life 1959 DIR Douglas Sirk 125 Min Mothers ruining their daughters lives with mismatched love
Keith Davis
29Jul09
excellent film on race. and loved the way Sirk blocked the actors and moved the camera.
