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Summary: Imitation of Life 1934/1959: GREAT COLLECTOR ITEM
Review: I love the movie Imitation of Life. Although I had never seen the 1934 version before, I loved just as much I did the 1959 version. I watch this movie all the time and think that it's a movie that everyone should see. The message that the movie shows just how hard and the lengths that people will go to fit in into a society that tells them that they must look and act a certian way. This is a item that everyone should have in their DVD collection and I reccommand it to everyone.
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Summary: Glad its only an Imitation
Review: I was very excited to hear about the release of the two versions of Imitation Of Life together on the same DVD. I had never seen the 1934 version and found it to be an equally enjoyable film as the 1959 one, although quite different (the main character is an entrepreneur versus an actress in the '59 version). The transfer for the 1934 version is decent considering it's age. I was more disappointed with the 1959 one. Granted, it was filmed in Eastman Color so one could not expect Technicolor brilliance, but the transfer is grainy and faded. To make matters worse, the layer change occurs at the worst possible place, as someone is running down the stairs (as with all DVD's, there is a slight pause at that time). This is very jarring; what was the engineer thinking? Layer changes ideally should be placed between a fade-out and a fade-in of scenes. Considering the price and the content, I would reccomend this DVD if you can ignore it's flaws.
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Summary: Great Double Feature. Great Value. Disappointing Transfers
Review: I was very excited to hear about the release of the two versions of Imitation Of Life together on the same DVD. I had never seen the 1934 version and found it to be an equally enjoyable film as the 1959 one, although quite different (the main character is an entrepreneur versus an actress in the '59 version). The transfer for the 1934 version is decent considering it's age. I was more disappointed with the 1959 one. Granted, it was filmed in Eastman Color so one could not expect Technicolor brilliance, but the transfer is grainy and faded. To make matters worse, the layer change occurs at the worst possible place, as someone is running down the stairs (as with all DVD's, there is a slight pause at that time). This is very jarring; what was the engineer thinking? Layer changes ideally should be placed between a fade-out and a fade-in of scenes. Considering the price and the content, I would reccomend this DVD if you can ignore it's flaws.
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Summary: Wonderful movie
Review: Imitation of Life is my all time favorite movie. I cherish the 1959 version but can also appreciate the original 1934 version. One aspect I would like to point out is that "Sarah Jane" in the latter version is not a "mulatto" or bi-racial person. That is not the message that was trying to be sent in this film. She is supposedly a Black woman whose father was extremely fair-skinned. Her struggle to fit into either world came from within and with her trying to relate and realize who she is and where she belongs. Both films were very socially conscience for their time periods and for today. Blacks are still struggling with the same issues just updated versions.
Excellent cinematography!
Rating: 
Summary: Two Imitations are Better than One!
Review: It is great to have these two classics back to back. the Sirk/Turner version has to win out in pure kitsch value and the transfer is beautiful. The colors jump off your screen and it is like a candy store of color and design - sets, costumes, hair - amazing. It makes you realize how much the world has changed. The Claudette Colbert version is really good as well and is full of powerful moments, of course - what with Colbert being obviously the better actress. Put them both together and you have a perfect double feature to escape the world.
Only negative - basically NO extra features or commentary of any sort and these films deserve better.
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Summary: Douglas Sirk's Magical Unrealism & the Lost Art of Melodrama
Review: On the surface, John Stahl's 1934 version of IMITATION OF LIFE and Douglas Sirk's later adaptation in 1959 appear quite similar. Based on the novel by Fannie Hurst (originally published in 1933), each of the two film renditions renders the story of a young woman divided between two worlds and her desperate search for her true identity. While Stahl's rather understated approach accomplishes the translation of Hurst's penetrating tale onto the screen with commendable proficiency, it is Sirk who improves upon it, amplifying the story into a masterful and illuminating social drama by exercising the devices of the melodrama to underscore and mine the significant issues of racial prejudice, fumbled motherhood, and materialism in American society in the 1950s.Putting the "direct" in director, Sirk triumphs with his unabashedly frank portrayal of racial hatred in his adaptation. He also uses color to great and conspicuous advantage to identify the immense social divide between blacks and whites in the film. In deep contrast to the white hearse carrying Annie's body, the very white-appearing "family" of Lora, Susie, Steve, and Sarah Jane are relegated to follow from behind in a black limousine. The black versus white theme displays the opposing magnetic forces between which the biracial Sarah Jane finds herself caught. She is attracted to the white side of life but is naturally pulled toward the black side despite constant resistance. Ironically, only when she finally gives in to the latter's natural gravitational force is she positioned by default and virtually blended into the white domain, fundamentally due to the loss of her only perceptible black affiliation: her birth mother. (A fascinating point: This daughter's appearance at her mother's funeral is inspired by a similar scene in Stahl's version, but in fact the daughter in Hurst's novel doesn't return for the funeral; she has moved to Bolivia with a white man who has no clue about her black heritage). Sirk also succeeds at accentuating the momentous tug-of-war between a woman's desire to have a successful career and her domestic accountability in the context of the 1950s. Sarah Jane possesses an ambition to get more out of life than what her hereditary role has assigned her, which makes her a lot like the career-ambitious Lora. Likewise, Susie is just as submissive to the cards life has dealt her as Annie is. Lora becomes an unwitting role model for Sarah Jane, and Annie an equally unwitting surrogate mother for Susie. Like Lora's emotionally empty acting career, Sarah Jane's sham of a white existence fails to provide her with the love she so desperately needs, something she eventually recognizes she cannot truly "live" without. For Annie, life in this fleshly world is a mere imitation of the real life that awaits her in Heaven. The exorbitance of Annie's funeral testifies to the emotional price paid with the loss of such a benevolent human being. Because Sirk's production style is so excessively augmented, the messages concerning social issues that 1950s viewers would rather not face directly are discreetly concealed in a fashion that makes such propositions easier for them to swallow. Sirk's interiors are extremely over the top, and his exteriors are so fake one cannot help but know they are not real, providing the film with a sense of "magical unrealism." Only in this artificial sense of reality can viewers accept the contrived closure given to the social problems that embody the film's plot. By riveting viewers' attention to the glamorous lifestyle Lora attains through career ambition, Sirk zeroes in on the genuine desires of women of the 1950s, particularly housewives or women who retreated from the workforce after WWII ended and their men returned home to resume their roles as the primary breadwinners. Having tasted the rewards of working outside the home, 1950s women dreamed of more than their contemporary home-based existence. Ultimately, Sirk points out that people in life are forced to make choices based on the situations in which they find themselves. All people are, in some way, like Sarah Jane, stuck in a position wanting or needing more out of life than what has been provided freely. To obtain what they yearn for means sacrificing part of their own needs or wants. No one, he asserts, can realistically have it all, no matter how much they try to overcome the partitions that fabricate the very structure of society. Humans make choices in life based on what is most important to them. Annie believes life isn't much without the giving of love to the people around her. Like the message behind the theme song of Sirk's adaptation, Annie trusts in the notion that "every day would be gray and incomplete without the one you love." Lora seems to learn this truth about life near the end of the film, when she puts her career on hold so she can be with Steve and Susie on a full-time basis. (Interestingly, Hurst's novel ends with the white daughter falling in love with her mother's beau, much to the mother's horrific surprise.) Sarah Jane, however, learns this lesson too late, never to recover the time she could have spent bonding with her now-deceased mother. Altogether, through his lavishly synthetic and ornate scenery, Sirk yields a high-pitched melody upon the dramatic canvas of life in his implosive acculturation of Hurst's tale of women struggling to find themselves in a complex world. In the end, he holds up his version of IMITATION OF LIFE as a mirror to his audience, showing them who they are and, perhaps more importantly, who they are not.
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Summary: GREAT CLASSIC!!!
Review: This movie is AMAZING!!! Its a great tale about a daughter who is able to pass as white even though she is black and she forgets all aboout her mother who is working hard as a black maid. I won't give it all away but this is a true treasure. I can't wait to buy it!!!
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