Lana Turner is great at embodying all of these conflicting parts of [Lora]... It helps when Sirk and his DP Russell Metty know how to light her and use lighting and composition to accentuate her performance.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 31, 2023

Sirk unleashed a melodramatic torrent of rage at the corrupt core of American life-the unholy trinity of racism, commercialism, and puritanism.

| Nov 16, 2015

The toughest-minded, most irresolvable movie ever made about race in this country.

| Mar 31, 2015

Imitation of Life is still a potent onion. When passed before the moviegoer's eyes, it may force theater owners to install aisle scuppers to drain off the tears.

| May 20, 2011

A consummate display of populist weepie-making.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 20, 2011

While this device lends more scope, it also results in the overdone busy actress/neglected daughter conflict.

| Mar 19, 2009

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 14, 2007

This modernized remake of Miss Hurst's frankly lachrymose tale is much the same as its soggy predecessor. It is the most shameless tear-jerker in a couple of years.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 25, 2006

Forget those who decry the '50s Hollywood melodrama; it is through the conventions of that hyper-emotional genre that Sirk is able to make such a devastatingly embittered and pessimistic movie.

| Feb 9, 2006

Sirk immediately and deliberately acknowledges the film's metaphoric, almost pathological obsession with surfaces.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 3, 2003

The film is a biting critique of American race relations in the Fifties and a complex study in contrasts and paradoxes.

| Mar 10, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 1, 2002

Douglas Sirk's 1959 film was the biggest grosser in Universal's history until the release of Airport, yet it's also one of the most intellectually demanding films ever made in Hollywood.

| Jan 1, 2000