Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE - A close Analysis

I. TIME
Douglas Sirk’s 1959 version of Imitation of Life spans a narrative time frame of a little over a decade. Essentially cleaved into two parts, the first half of the film takes place in 1947. During this half of the film, the passage of time is most significantly communicated by the domestic habits of the characters. For example, we know when each day is ending because we either see the two children – Susie and Mary Jane – go to bed, or an evening meal is illustrated or discussed. The first night passes with Sarah Jane complaining at bedtime that she “doesn’t want to always sleep in the back.” The next day, upon Archer’s arrival at the apartment, the children are again sent to bed and the following day’s time frame is additionally communicated when Archer asks Lora on a dinner date. Dinner is later used again when Lora asks Archer to dine with them at their house. In each instance, dinner and bedtime are used to heighten the sense of potential for loving, domestic relationships – potential which ultimately goes unfulfilled.

Between the two halves, Sirk utilizes a classic Hollywood montage to illustrate the ellipse of ten years, during which Lora goes from a widow to a famous actress. This montage – a series of play titles and articles of which Lora is the star -- is far more effective than actually showing us Lora’s rise to fame in any other real or quasi-condensed time frame. By quickly watching her notoriety swell over the course of a decade (albeit a minute film time), the contrast between the characters during the first half, and the second half to follow, is more poignant.

The second half of the film takes place in 1958. Again, during this half, dining – or at least the social consumption of food or libation -- is used to delineate the passage of days. On the first night, Lora has a cocktail party to await her reviews. The next evening, Lora tells Annie she has a “meeting” over cocktails. The next, Lora requests that Sarah Jane stay and help Annie in the kitchen for another dinner party. Unlike the first half of the film, however, dining in this portion is not used to conjure the potential for relationships and a “happy home,” but rather to heighten the separation between all the characters, particularly Annie and Lora. Indeed, in each instance, Lora is in the front of the house entertaining, while Annie is relegated to service in the kitchen.

II. SOUND
Sirk’s use of sound in this film powerfully informs the story’s message, themes, and emotional developments. In terms of dialogue, all of the film’s major ideas are expressed by one character or another. The theme of representations, aesthetic, and surface appearances is magnified in Archer’s early statement that his “camera could have a love affair with [Lora’s] face.” The agent, Loomis, when he says to Lora, “Your face will pass,” then suggests she prostitute herself for fame, best exemplifies the film’s undertones of sexism, misogyny, and the sacrifices a working woman makes. The idea of self denial (particularly racial denial) for freedom is first conjured when Sarah Jane speaks of her father, saying “he was practically white,” and the inverse theme – that of sacrificing freedom for the preservation of the self (i.e., race) – is illustrated when Annie confides in Lora with, “It’s a sin to be ashamed of what you are…and worse to deny it. How do you explain to your child that she was born to be hurt?”

While Sirk uses the dialogue to make direct references to the themes, he amplifies them more indirectly with his use of sound effects. Most notably are his use of phones and doors. When Lora and Archer are first about to kiss, the doorbell rings, then the phone. The sounds separate them, forcing Lora to answer both rings, and leaving Archer alone. They never kiss, and this magnifies their impending emotional distance. Early in the second half of the film, when we first hear Annie and Lora talking about Annie’s “sickness,” again the phone rings, and Lora’s career once again comes between her and her relationships. Finally, and most poignantly, is the interruption by a knock at the door when a dying Annie goes to visit Sarah Jane in L.A. When Sarah Jane’s friend arrives (mistaking Annie for a maid), the mother’s relationship with her daughter reaches its complete abortion, and they never see each other again.

Last is Sirk’s use of music. While, for the most part, the film’s scores simply mimics the emotional ebb and flow of the film, there are distinct and obvious uses of music to make a socio-cultural statement. The opening song of the same title as the film is fairly “on-the-nose.” The final song at the funeral is equally (albeit appropriately) melodramatic. Sirk’s use of jazz, however, is far more powerful and obtuse. When issues of blackness arise, we often her jazz music rise with it in the background. The best example of this is the scene when Sarah Jane’s boyfriend, Frankie, finds out her secret and hits her. The scene begins with mellow jazz beneath it, but as the scene turns violent, the jazz music becomes frantic and uncontrolled. Thus, the music not only supplements the emotions of the film, but with the use of jazz – a style of music particularly associated with African Americans at the time -- Sirk also makes a stark social and cultural comment.

III. MISE-EN-SCENE
Even more deliberate and engaging than his use of sound, is Sirk’s mise-en-scene. Certain visual themes permeate the film, and each expresses a deeper, richer notion of the film’s messages. First, for example, is the theme of reflections. Sirk frequently uses mirrors, windows, and jewels (the diamonds during the opening title sequence) to amplify the notion of the characters (and America) being caught up in the hollow value of surfaces – especially the surface of the skin and its color. When Frankie confronts Sarah Jane and hits her, we see Sarah Jane’s reflection in the storefront window, heightening her inability to escape her surface. When Annie reads Sarah Jane’s note and discovers that Sarah Jane is not actually working at the library, we see this discovery in a mirror. And of course, when Annie sees Sarah Jane for the last time in L.A., their initial confrontation is framed by a mirror too.

Sirk also uses a very deliberate color palette to communicate the themes of the film. In the first scene, when Lora and Annie meet, they are surrounded by millions of colors in the form of beach umbrellas. This multi-colored scene speaks to the initial irrelevance of skin color to the characters. As the film progresses, the colors get more and more contrasting, and in many cases, overtly black and white. In the second half of the film, for example, Lora’s new home has a white piano, white furniture, and a black bar-top and barstools behind which Annie frequently stands. The new home’s kitchen, where Lora and Annie most often come together, features a black and white checkered floor. This increasing contrast magnifies the increasing separation of the characters. Of course, this contrast is reconciled when at Annie’s funeral, after we see a white casket and hearse, the characters are finally equalized by mourning within a black limousine.

Sirk did not forget wardrobe in his color scheme either. Cold, lifeless blue palettes slowly make their way into the film as Lora becomes more and more career-oriented and less emotionally alive.

Finally, Sirk’s deliberate use of shadows (particularly from banisters and rafters) and furniture to bisect two characters in a single frame both foreshadows and confirms to us the character’s relational separations. When Archer first enters Lora’s apartment in the first half of the film, Sirk purposefully chooses to shoot the entrance at a high angle which noticeably places a ceiling fan blade between the two potential lovers. Later, when Lora tells Archer that she may have to leave for Italy, the harsh diagonals of the rafters above him – provided by Sirk’s low angle shot – amplify again that impending separation. When Annie first enters Sarah Jane’s room in L.A., Sirk frames Sarah Jane within the arm of a wicker chair, poignantly cleaving her from her mother. And most stark, perhaps, is the bed post that bisects the frame when Susie tells Lora that Annie was always more of a mother.

IV. PROTAGONIST
The protagonist of this film is Lora, for she is the character through whom we see most of the story unfold. Indeed, her choices most affect the lives of the other characters, too. While Lora is certainly one of the coldest, strangest protagonists I’ve ever seen in a classic Hollywood film, Sirk does a masterful job of not alienating us from her, but rather aiding us to pass no judgment on her values whatsoever. For every sympathetic trait he gives her, he seems to give her another questionable one that keeps us relatively neutral. Lora’s refusal to compromise her ethics (prostitute herself) for her career is admirable, for example, though she willingly sacrifices motherhood instead.

Additionally, Sirk wisely does not allow the film to be Lora-dependent. Though at the beginning of the film she is present in all but two quick scenes, in the second half of the film, we experience far more of the effects of her decisions than we do her presence itself. We, as an audience, know more about the characters and can better predict their plights than Lora can, and this is essential to our enjoying and appreciating the film despite the somewhat cool protagonist.