Imitation Of Life Film Analysis

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In the Imitation of life film, there were several similarities in both the John Stahl’s 1934 and Douglas Sirk’s 1959 version of the film. The differences that were portrayed were also influenced with the time and era that the film was produced. Both films dealt with mothers and their troubled teens and also the issues with race and the acceptance of the society. The both have a single white mothers( Bea and Lora) and each have an arrangement with the black mother( Delilah and Annie) with the biracial “passing” white child that work together to survive and raise their daughters as different issues arise throughout the films. The main issues that should be focused are the differences in the eras of the movies and how traumatic it was for African …show more content…
The 1959 film, gave the African American mother more of a voice and she was able to show acting and emotions through her work, but was still overshadowed by the white actresses. An interesting fact is the choice of actors that the directors chose in each movie in the 1934 movie, with Fredi Washington, she played the role of the biracial child (Peola) and she was black and better fit for the role. In the 1959 version, they used Susan Kohner, which was actually a Latin and white woman, used to play a half African American woman. According to Bowdre, K., (2015), “With the exception of Fredi Washing ton in John Stahl’s version of Imitation of Life (1934), White actors and actresses continued to be selected to play Black people” (pg. 22). Both movies use the topic to show how difficult it is to be in the “wrong” race in a society that divides people into racial categories and despite the filmmakers' good intentions, both films ended up reinforcing the racial stereotypes they were challenging. The need for African Americans to want to pass and blend with the society and moving past stereotypes are major issues that should be recognized in both