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Reviews
Imitation of Life (1934)
Offensive? Not to this black film fan!
Let's get down to it! Here's Hollywood's best pre-WWII effort to portray not only white-black racism, but its subtleties. I doubt many women shared the caring relationship of Bea and Delilah.
What offends some I strikes me as honest. For the one or two absurd moments (e.g., the faithful, mourning Negro servants in the you-know-what scene), many more are deft and moving. The lavish 1959 version cannot compare.
(Love Lana Turner, but she and Juanita Moore are wooden and embarrassing in the remake; it's worth seeing for Mahalia Jackson and of course, Susan Kohner's scenes at the cocktail party and getting beaten in the back alley. Susan's scenes are so showy that they kill any hope of honesty, which was never in the script to begin with)!
At the beginning of this version, do you remember Delilah's response when Bea asks why she hadn't taken the streetcar? Racism is accepted as a given; the characters cast their lot from there. Both women have seen tragedy, and The Depression looms. In this crucial aspect, Bea and Delilah are equals. But to get anywhere with such a touchy gambit, the lead performances had better be good.
Louise Beavers is mesmerizing. I cannot say she gives the best performance I've seen on the silver screen, but it's hard for me to name a more focused one.
It is easy to dismiss her lines as demeaning or simple-minded. With each viewing, I see a woman whose circumstance and inner strength enables her to look beyond the mortal sorrows of this life. Doesn't she ring a bell, especially if you grew up black in the South? She was so many of our mothers, aunts and grandmothers. Ms. Beavers nails it.
In this plot, she's more: She is a a mystic whose spirituality not only complements but critiques Bea's get-ahead pragmatism. Pre-feminist themes ricochet in this picture: successfully, I think.
I'm gonna get slammed for my only significant reservation: I don't feel Fredi Washington's performance. She's more than adequate, but in no league with Louise Beavers or Claudette Colbert. From all that I have read and heard about her, I conclude that Ms. Washington let her own good taste get the best of her. She seems to underplay on purpose, to evoke a smoldering quality of rage. If I am correct, I appreciate her instincts, but they cannot work over every scene she has in this potboiler plot.
Nothing about this movie is weak. Even the few headslapping moments are so sincere that they come off as camp, at worst. Frankly, I'm not sure I could otherwise bear Louise Beavers' last scene.
Notice that her face is almost immobile; a single glycerin tear rolls down her cheek; her final, wrenching line reading is actually disembodied, off-camera (a master stroke of direction).
This, folks, is the killer scene for me -- not the histrionics at the hearse, which grabbed me mainly inasmuch as they showed an unqualified moment of dignity in black America, rare for 30's Hollywood. Note the sympathetic white mourners who have a line or two...
Claudette Colbert is radiant, as previous posters have said. Her performance is less memorable than Ms. Beavers', yet she hits the bull's-eye. Bea is warm but just distant enough to put across a real woman of her time, a white one who can never hope to understand black folks or the many contradictions of her relationship to them. In her best moments, which are without dialogue, Colbert conveys this delicate point. (Anyway...Bea has her own slutty daughter to worry about, right?)
It was said that Ms. Colbert had the best figure on the Paramount lot -- not lost on Universal, which dressed her to the nines in scene after scene.
It's hard to believe Colbert was barely 30 at the time. She looks no older, but acts as if she were going on a hard 50. And what a year for her! She won the Oscar for "It Happened One Night," and also scored this second huge hit, which artistically speaking is hardly chopped liver.
She made both movies on loan to other studios after Paramount suspended her! Talk about having the last laugh: if only Louise Beavers could have shared it in her own career!
I first saw this film on the big screen about 20 years ago at a now-defunct repertory cinema in Chicago. The matinée comprised me and a handful of elderly black women. We applauded as the curtain rang down; the clapping had the satisfied quality that follows a parable.
These Three (1936)
Here's the secret
(Semi-spoiler below)
There is one reason why this "sham" is better than the more literal 1962 remake of "The Children's Hour": Lillian Hellman. At least producer Sam Goldwyn had the taste and foresight to hire her to bowdlerize her own story!
Perhaps sensing a potential disaster, Hellman reached deep inside for a do-over that would preserve the integrity of her play.
She succeeded in part by playing up the romantic tension to the hilt against the morals of the day. Although "These Three" is as heterosexual as it gets, its details are quite sordid according to its dated upper-middle-class standards.
The adult performances are fine; Miriam Hopkins is indeed the best, but director William Wyler even makes a solid performance of Merle Oberon's haughty reserve. Here, it only reinforces the taboo proceedings.
Hellman really shines in her reconception of the evil child, one of the most disturbing, if infrequent characters in the history of storytelling. She does so more unflinchingly than Hollywood would again attempt until the (inferior) "The Bad Seed" (1956).
Hellman makes the bargain foolproof by way of a unique pathology: the worse things get for Bonita Granville's character, the smoother and more damaging are her lies. This is her unforgettable talent.
"These Three" is not quite a great movie; it's an excellent filming of a stage play. Still, as played by Bonita Granville, Hellman presents one of the most brilliant characters I've ever seen on the silver screen. Can you imagine how much better so many movies would have been with such simple yet ingenious insurance against plot holes?
Of course, extraordinary directing and acting are needed to make such a gambit pay off. Wyler and young Bonita deliver, as others have stated.