Northwest Film Forum

Soap opera-esque in the absolute best sense, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life is one of the great melodramas of the ‘50s, steeped in the race and class politics of the era. A white single mother in show business struggles to maintain her relationship with her daughter as she strives for stage fame; the African-American widow with whom the aspiring starlet shares an apartment has a light-skinned daughter of her own who, to her mother’s dismay, longs to pass for white; the film follows the two mother-daughter relationships as they develop over several years.