Imitation of Life

The plot of Douglas Sirk's last film follows an aging actress and mother who hires a black maid, a mother too. But with Sirk, cinema does not end with a plot or simple kitsch. He is the master of melodrama, a European intellectual for whom cinema was first and foremost a medium of form, of stylistic content. There has never been a director that so masterfully used setting and camerawork. Though the plot touches on explosive subject matters, there is no naivety, just irony and double-meaning.