Marc Eliot’s Art of Film

Douglas Sirk’s 1959 Imitation of Life

A struggling widow and her daughter take in a Black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter; the two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.

“Sirk unleashed a melodramatic torrent of rage at the corrupt core of American life-the unholy trinity of racism, commercialism, and puritanism.”

- New Yorker