7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A struggling young actress with a six-year-old daughter sets up housekeeping with a homeless black widow and her light-skinned eight-year-old daughter who rejects her mother by trying to pass for white.
Starring: Lana Turner, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Dan O'Herlihy, Susan KohnerRomance | 100% |
Melodrama | 18% |
Drama | 12% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.00:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, French, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
When Universal set out to remake Imitation of Life a quarter century after its original adaptation, much had changed. The Depression was over; African-Americans had fought with distinction in World War II (though not without resistance, as recounted in such films as The Tuskegee Airmen); the Supreme Court had decided Brown v. Board of Education; and Rosa Parks had refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, leading to the boycott that became a milestone in the civil rights movement. The essential plot of Fanny Hurst's novel was more relevant than ever, but the setting and characters had to be reinvented for a contemporary audience. Screenwriters Eleanore Griffin (Boys Town) and Allan Scott (Top Hat) updated the story to the Forties and Fifties and reconceived the lead character as an aspiring actress, a role that perfectly suited star Lana Turner, whose screen presence was the polar opposite of Claudette Colbert's breezy comedienne. One of film noir's memorable femme fatales in the original The Postman Always Rings Twice, Turner had become more famous for her private life than her screen roles. Married eight times, she was embroiled in scandal the year before the remake of Imitation of Life, when her teenage daughter stabbed and killed her gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato. The daughter was acquitted, but in the immediate aftermath Turner's very image on the screen connoted high drama. That image provided ideal material for director Douglas Sirk, whose lushly expressionistic style was often dismissed as soap opera during his active years in Hollywood but who has since been recognized as a cinematic master, revered by talents as diverse as Quentin Tarantino and Todd Haynes. Imitation of Life was Sirk's last American film before he returned to his native Germany, from which he and his Jewish wife had fled the Nazis. No director could have been better attuned to the story's tragic theme of how genetic inheritance directs one's path in life. Working with his usual creative team, Sirk constructed what appears, on the surface, to be a traditional "woman's picture" about passion and romance. On closer inspection, though, his Imitation of Life reveals itself as a kind of waking nightmare in which every main character is permanently trapped, and from which death is the only escape.
Imitation of Life was shot by Douglas Sirk's usual Hollywood cinematographer, Russell Metty, who would later win an Oscar shooting Spartacus for Stanley Kubrick. Even more than with the 1935 version of the film with which it shares a single Blu-ray disc, I wish that Universal had provided information regarding the source and mastering, because this 1080p, AVC-encoded presentation raises some interesting questions. First, it has been widely reported that Universal recently undertook a 4k restoration of Sirk's Imitation of Life, the results of which have played at a few specialty venues. One hopes that the same restoration provided the source for the Blu-ray, but nothing is certain, especially since Blu-ray discs often enter production many months in advance of street date. Second, the film's aspect ratio on this Blu-ray is 2.00:1, whereas previous DVD releases have been framed at 1.85:1, which, by 1959, was an established standard. No explanation has been offered for the change. According to people who have an earlier DVD release (which I do not), the new framing does not crop significant picture information but in fact adds information on the top and sides. While these questions cannot be answered at this time (and I will update the review if I learn more), one can certainly appreciate the richness and intensity of the Blu-ray's colors, which are crucial to Sirk's visual design. His use of reds, yellows and blues, both compositionally and thematically, are essential to the tone of each scene and the overall impact of the film, and the Blu-ray delivers these colors in their varied hues with authority and conviction. Detail is generally quite good, although it suffers in some shots that obviously involve either opticals or rear projection (e.g., in the opening sequence at the beach). In crucial scenes where characters are deliberately obscured (by mirrored reflections, shutters, grilles or some other distortion deliberately blocking the camera's view), the level of fine detail is sufficient to make out both the character and the object blocking them, which is essential to the artistic effect. Black levels and contrast appear to be properly set, and the film's grain pattern appears natural. The average bitrate is exactly the same for the 1959 version as for the 1934, at 22.998 Mbps. Here, too, while I would have preferred more bandwidth, the result appears to be without blemish.
The original mono soundtrack has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. The dialogue and sound effects are clear, but Sirk's version relies much more heavily on music to carry the film's emotional freight than did the 1934 adaptation. The score by Sirk's usual composer, Frank Skinner (Harvey), is lushly emotive or, depending on one's orientation, flat-out manipulative. The high end sometimes pushes the limits of the recording technology, and I do not recommend turning up the volume too loudly, but the fault is in the original soundtrack. The recording of gospel singer Mahalia Jackson performing "Trouble of the World" is excellent, as is the performance of the film's title song by Earl Grant over the opening titles (music by Sammy Fain, lyrics by Paul Francis Webster).
The extras first appeared on Universal's 2008 two-disc DVD set of Imitation of Life, which featured both the 1934 and 1959 versions.
Douglas Sirk was famous for working in the narrative form known as "melodrama", a term that has acquired a bad reputation, although I'm not sure why, given the continued popularity of sci-fi, fantasy and comic book films. Where would any of those genres be without the big emotions, grand gestures and impossible choices forced on characters by circumstances that are the hallmarks of melodrama? Sirk just happened to be interested in a different genre, one dominated by women (hence the term "woman's film") and, at its best, animated by issues of genuine relevance. He and Imitation of Life were an ideal match. Highly recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1934
Limited Edition to 3000
1959
2002
Limited Edition to 3000
1957
1956
Fox Studio Classics
1960
50th Anniversary Edition
1967
1980
Warner Archive Collection
1946
Fox Studio Classics
1947
2006
Limited Edition to 3000
1959
1954
Limited Edition to 3000
1957
2015
Limited Edition to 3000
1960
2017
1995
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1959
William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
1996