Brief biography of Douglas Sirk (the director)

Melodrama basic characteristics

Sirk's melodrama

Some background for Imitation of Life

Issues portrayed in Sirk's version

Lana Turner

Some quotes about the film

Bending the Material (some things to look for)

Sirk: biographical

• b. 1900: Hamburg, Germany
  Hans Detlef Sierck

  education: studied: law, philosophy, history of art

• 1921-34: theater director in Germany

   

• 1934: hired by UFA
  7 films in Germany: melodramatic form
• 1937: leaves Germany under pressure from Nazis
  2 films in Europe
• 1939: arrival in US
  contract w/Warners
• 1940: Warners project abandoned:
  chicken farming

• 1942: writer's contract w/Columbia
  directed 1st American pic: HITLER'S MADMAN

• to 1949: 6 more pix

• 1949: returned to Germany

• 1950: FIRST LEGION: independent production
  7-year contract w/Universal

• thru 1959: 21 pix:

  comedies: NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM

  WEEKEND WITH FATHER

  adventure/costume: TAZA, SON OF COCHISE

  SIGN OF THE PAGAN

  CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT

  musicals: HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL?

  TAKE ME TO TOWN

  melodramas: ALL I DESIRE

  THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW

  *MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION

  ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS

  WRITTEN ON THE WIND

• 1959: IMITATION OF LIFE:
  Sirk's last American film

• 1959: contract w/Universal terminated by Sirk: illness
  moved to Lugano Switzerland, by Lake Como

• 1963-9: staged 6 plays: Munich, Hamburg

• 1971 Screen magazine discovered Sirk

• 1972: Edinburgh Film Festival: rediscovery/reexamination

• late 1970's: 3 short films in Germany: students, Fassbinder

• 1979: retrospectives mounted: New York/San Francisco
  Sirk's 1st visit to US since 1959 (FilmFrog was there!)

• 1987: death at home in Switzerland

Melodrama: basic characteristics

1. Legibility: everyone can read it

2. Expressiveness: given to exaggeration:

everything brought into the open

3. Simplification of roles: good and evil clearly delineated

4. Strong identification:

emotions alive w/high suffering

5. Devaluation of language:

language less important than mise-en-scene

 

Melodrama: Sirk

• manipulation of melodramatic form:
  in filmmaking, camera & cutting take place of language:

  "writing with the camera":

  "angles are a director's thoughts, lighting his philosophy"

• Bending the material:
  irony: combination of circumstances or a result that is the opposite of what is or what might be expected:

  it's ironic that the firehouse burned down

• Euripidean irony: deus ex machina: the god in the machine:
  Alcestis: Euripides: last lines:
  "The manifestations of Gods happen in many shapes

  Bring many matters to happy ends

  What we thought would happen does not happen

  The impossible is not impossible for the Unknowns

  And that is the way it happened here and today."

  tacked-on happy ending makes the crowd happy,

  but, to a few, it exposes what's underneath:

  Sirk: "In IMITATION OF LIFE you don't believe the happy end, and you're not supposed to."

• Distancing: as in didactic theater:
  even tho Sirk's audience implicated in action on screen (evidenced by abundant tears or self-protective laughter):

  distance still exists in film itself

  1. Sirk's mise-en-scene: how it's manifested:

   
  • camera angles: thoughts:
    unusual angles: make viewer reassess situations

     

  • lighting: philosophy: non-natural lighting:
    doesn't come from where real light source would

     

  • placement of objects & chars w/i frame:
    screens: block chars visually:

    represent blocked communication

    mirrors: seem to represent reality, but don't;

    instead, present an opposite, "backward" reality:

    flattened and w/o depth:

    used at moments of self-affirmation:irony

   

   

  Sirk: "The mirror is the imitation of life. What is interesting about a mirror is that it does not show yourself as you are, it shows you your own opposite."

  chars placed in rooms heavily marked with their social situations

  general flattening of the image:

  preponderance of long & medium shots

  b/g seems to have as much force (presence) as f/g:

  f/g objects often placed to side: thus

  larger spaces left in center of frame:

  b/g seems to come forward, make itself felt:

  all seems to fuse into single surface

  but flatness doesn't preclude individual power of specific objects or events:

  sometimes: it seems like certain events cause flatness:

  mirror shots: most common example:

  presence of char & reflection both in frame:

  reduces char to state of mere reflection

   

  • moving camera: expresses irony:
    mobility of camera implicates viewer on emotional level:

    yet camera distanced from chars: suggests detachment

    Russell Metty: DP from 1952:

    all important Sirk films (except TARNISHED ANGELS)

     

  • use of baroque color schemes

   

  2. style of acting: delivery of lines:brings out hidden meanings

  3. absence of heroes:

  instead, Sirk most interested in ambiguous char:
  one who is torn apart: split

  ambiguous chars played out vs. more stable ones:

  Sara Jane vs. Susie: Wonder Bread

  4. choreography as a direct expression of char: set piece

  5. theme of blindness: sometimes literal:

  most often: blindness of chars to their situations

  6. commenting on 1950's American society:

  purpose of manipulation/distortion of genre

IMITATION OF LIFE:

1933: novel by Fannie Hurst: Bea Pullman & Jessie/Delilah & Peola

1934: film directed by John Stahl

both book and film straightforward & unambiguous in attitudes: re:

race

motherhood

emotional centers for story

title: refers to Peola: trying to "pass" for white: imitating white life;

Sirk subverts this:

 

STAHL VERSION	SIRK VERSION
"invisible" storytelling techniques	techniques that call attention to themselves
story of 2 mothers complementary versions of "good" mom	issue of motherhood just as clouded as that of race: both black and white mothers exposed: cliches re: excessive love/excessive egotism present mother/absent mother nurturer/sex object bald opposition becomes ironic
opening scene: in the home: Bea caring for Jessie ("quack-quack")	opening scene: in public: Coney Island: Lora has lost Susie
Bea's success due to Delilah's recipe: partnership bet. 2 women	Lora's success due to her beauty: she's a sexual object: actress Annie not part of it
man enters Bea's life: after her success	man enters Lora's life: in first scene: he's conscious reminder of her choice: bet. career and love

Sirk's version deals w/issues of:

• 1. race: but in 1950's America: issue much more complex than in 1930's:
  Rosa Parks, Brown v. Board of Education, etc.
  civil rights issues not resolved

  Sirk avoids direct reference to Civil Rights Movement:

  but it's there under surface:

  e.g., SJ's refusal to go to school: Brown v. Board

  SJ's affair w/white man: loosening prohibitions

  Mahalia Jackson: participation in CR demonstrations

  introduced black gospel music to mainstream

  theme of race: not dealt w/directly:

  becomes issue bet. black mother & white-skinned daughter

  not issue bet. black domestic & white employer

  familial, not social, problem:

  crucial that white actress plays SJ:

  her problem shown as internalized: split char

  Sirk's reversal: stereotypes:

  fair, blonde woman: self-centered, bad dark woman: martyr-like, good (too much)

  shows how white woman & black woman used vs. each other:

  white woman: embodies social standards of beauty:

  impossible for black woman to achieve

  black woman: powerful rebuke to self-indulgent narcissism of white woman who dares think of herself

• 2. failed motherhood:

  time frame of story: 1947-58:

  period of drastic shifts for woman:
  female employment: grew by 50 %

  women pulled bet. careers & domestic responsibilities

  mixed signals given to women at the time:

  restrictive attitudes: re:

  woman working & need or desire to work

  1963: 4 years in future:

  Betty Friedan: "The Feminine Mystique":

  suburban wives: sympathetically described:

  "Is this all?": women torn

  2 mothers: Lora's life a sham, a performance

  Annie has too much heart: smothers child

  film becomes drama of split female consciousness:

  Annie as Lora's psychic other half:
  good mother to Lora's bad

  nurturer to her egotist

  "natural" mother to her synthetic one

  "janitorial" worker to Lora's professional woman

  symbolically --- and literally --- black and white

  film offers no way out: CAUGHT:

  Lora: the careerist: a female mannequin

  Annie: the traditional woman: fails at raising her daughter

• 3. criticism of American materialism:
  beads falling under credits: ultimate symbol:

  self reflexivity of film:

  primary iconography of performance, spectacle, visual display:

  women's sole escape: towards theater:

  Lora: literally: actress: finds salvation on stage:
  maternal activities seem contaminated by material ones

  Susie: "Oh, mother, stop acting":

  but she's Lora's understudy (romance w/Steve)

  Annie: pretends to be SJ's "mammy"

  orchestrates her own funeral

  Sarah Jane: pretends to be white

  mimics slave

  works as showgirl

  and so, too, w/many woman who saw film:

  element of pretense to their lives

  "Feminine Mystique": McCall's magazine piece: mid-1950's:

  "... the bored editors ... ran a little article called 'The Mother who Ran Away.' To their amazement, it brought the highest readership of any article they had ever run. 'It was our moment of truth,' said a former editor. We suddenly realized that all those women at home with their three and a half children were miserably unhappy."

  in other words:

  these women had been role-playing just like the protagonists

Film's finger on pulse of crucial issues: race and emerging feminism

Universal's biggest money-maker till JAWS (1975)

#4 box-office draw of 1959:

responsive chords were struck by film

One other factor: Lana Turner:

IMITATION OF LIFE: as narrativized version of Lana's life:

• 1. Lana as "uninvolved mother":
  Cheryl Crane: recollections of maternal absence:

  but her nannies were European, not black

  she was amazed at parallels bet. their lives and chars' lives on-screen:

  e.g., the star who spoils her daughter, but is never there her actual junior high school used for Susie's graduation

  the pink bedroom

• 2. Stompanato affair: 4 April 1958 (Good Friday):
  filming: August thru October 1958

  Crane 15: overheard fight bet. Lana & Johnny Stompanato (gangster/thug);

  was alarmed when he threatened violence;

  got knife from kitchen, stabbed Johnny in chest in mother's bedroom;

  Lana: status as "unfit mother" broadcast:

  "greatest performance of her life" given on witness stand

  intimations of Cheryl's romantic involvement w/Stompanato

  event was the context w/i which I/L was made: capitalized on scandal

   

  I/L: capitalized also on Lana's persona: what's on screen bled over to personal life:

  characterized by quality of "detachment" in both dress & acting style:

  1. dress: thruout 1950's: Lana associated w/clothes:
  her films "sold" on basis of "million dollar wardrobes":

  a certain "Lana Turner look":

  expensiveness: jewelry, elaborate head-dresses, etc.:

  not "working" clothes: impractical

  associated w/glossy, "modern artifice"

  rather than "old-fashioned values":

  use of synthetic fibers

  colors play down "softness": dehumanizing

  emphasis on artifice:

  gives sense in many of her films that she is "on show,"performing: Sirk used this

  2. acting style:

  key metaphor for imitation in the film: acting

  Turner: set up as "actress" apart from her ability to act well;

  but she puts on performance thruout film

  she's just as detached by acting style as by clothes

  Turner's habit in many later films:

  turns away from person she's acting with to deliver line:
  her acting poised and posed:

  she often looks out of the frame: towards camera

  her face moves little:

  compare to Garland (in anything):

  hangs on partner's every word

  facially expressive

Sirk: "After I/L, Lana Turner said, 'Douglas, for the first time you have made me feel like an actress. It is not just being beautiful.' --- which, of course, is all she has ever been required to do."

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959): Directed by Douglas Sirk

Some Quotes:

I tried to make it into a picture of social consciousness --- not only of a white social consciousness, but of a Negro one, too. Both white and black are leading imitated lives .... There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections. If you try to grasp happiness itself your fingers only meet glass. It's hopeless.

--- Douglas Sirk

The most important tool of my trade was a mirror. I always had a three-way full-length mirror outside my trailer door so that I could check my appearance before I went on the set.

--- Lana Turner

The mirror is the imitation of life. What is interesting about a mirror is that it does not show yourself as you are, it shows you your own opposite.

--- Douglas Sirk

Every element in a Sirk film is on some level a reflection or mockery only of some other element of that same film. The revelations --- the moments which seem to take on special power --- lead us only to more reflections of these revelations, until we realize that the only real revelation is that everything is a reflection.

--- Fred Camper

IMITATION OF LIFE (1959): Bending the Material

1. unusual camera angles

2. lighting: does it match source?

3. placement of objects within the frame

especially: screens

mirrors

placement of characters within the frame

4. rooms heavily marked with characters' social situations

5. actors' delivery of lines

6. moving camera

7. color

8. heavy use of medium and long shots

9. backgrounds brought forward: screen has appearance of flat surface

10. choreography: as direct expression of character

11. theme of blindness