Imitation of Life (1934); Little Man, What Now? (1934)

Imitation of Life (1934)
June 10, 2012 - 7:00 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
actress/author Marilyn Knowlden.
Part of: 
Universal Pictures: Celebrating 100 Years

Imitation of Life (1934)

Directed by John Stahl

Renowned for its early Westerns and horror films, Universal also laid substantial groundwork for the melodrama in a series of films directed by John M. Stahl, three of which made such a strong impression that they were remade by Douglas Sirk in the 1950s (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession and When Tomorrow Comes, which became Interlude).

While Sirk’s movies are known for Technicolor expressiveness, Stahl’s power lay in his restraint; his camera’s cool, lingering gaze mapped the byways of emotional turbulence with open sincerity. Imitation of Life, based on Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel, focuses on single mother Bea (Claudette Colbert), who successfully markets her Black maid Delilah’s (Louise Beavers) pancake recipe but fails to improve the plight of Delilah’s daughter, Peola (Fredi Washington), who “passes” for white. Though it’s suffused with stereotypes—most obviously in its appropriation of the servile and superstitious “mammy” figure—it’s an earnest attempt to address racial tensions in its day. The assertion that Peola was born into a world prejudiced against her is skillfully and compassionately wrought.

The film brims with memorable supporting players (look for Ned Sparks as the crusty and clownish businessman Elmer Smith), but Black actress Fredi Washington makes a particularly strong impression as Peola. With her magnetic screen presence and a carefully modulated anxiety, Washington conveys her character’s dilemma with clear, tragic force. “You don’t know what it’s like to look white and be Black,” she tells Bea. Unlike the character she plays, however, Washington, later a journalist and social activist, proudly bore her ethnicity throughout her career and co-founded the Negro Actors Guild of America in 1937.

In addition to its racial drama, the film touches admirably on women’s independence. As the rags-to-riches entrepreneur, the always charismatic Colbert shifts easily from working class exasperation to society glamor, but her confidence and self-sufficiency remain central. Exploring issues of career, motherhood and romance through its female protagonists, the film helped establish the “weepie” as a substantial genre.

—Doug Cummings

Universal Pictures. Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr. Based on the novel by Fannie Hurst. Screenwriter: William Hurlbut. Cinematographer: Merritt Gerstad. Editor: Philip Cahn, Maurice Wright. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson, Ned Sparks, Louise Beavers.

35mm, b/w, 116 min.

Little Man, What Now? (1934)

Directed by Frank Borzage

Universal’s adaptation of the 1932 international bestseller by Hans Fallada is a rare example of Hollywood addressing Germany’s interwar depression and political turmoil while it was happening. For the most part, the industry typically avoided offending its German distributors and shied away from potentially controversial topics.

Released when Hitler was already chancellor of Germany, Little Man, What Now? became the first film in director Frank Borzage’s increasingly anti-Nazi “Weimar Trilogy,” which includes Three Comrades (1938) and The Mortal Storm (1940), both also starring Margaret Sullavan. The film is virtually bookended with street demonstrations dispersed by police, and the title is a rhetorical question posed to the baby of the story’s newlyweds, Hans (Douglass Montgomery) and Laamchen (Sullavan): What will be the fate of an individual in a country facing violent upheaval?

Hans and Laamchen are happily married in Ducherow, but struggling to make ends meet in hard economic times. The news of Laamchen’s pregnancy causes them worry, particularly Hans, who works as a bookkeeper for a bullying grain merchant who threatens to fire his employees on a regular basis. Their efforts to establish a new life apart from the chaos around them leads them to Berlin and a series of relationships with cutthroat employers, desperate opportunists, and ideologues. But their commitment to each other never falters. Though it was merely her second feature, the strong-willed Sullavan reportedly insisted on the selection of Borzage as director, and the material couldn’t have appealed more to the filmmaker as it connected with his major theme: the possibility of personal transcendence through romantic love. The diminutive but soulful Sullavan quickly became one of Borzage’s key muses, much as Janet Gaynor did in the silent period.

Borzage’s visual finesse especially shines in two set pieces: an Edenic countryside outing in which Hans and Laamchen are bathed in soft light and playfully chase each other in a magnificent tracking shot; and a conversation staged on a merry-go-round, an apt visual metaphor for the lovers’ determined grasp in a whirlwind of social change.

—Doug Cummings

Universal Pictures. Producer: Carl Laemmle Jr. Based on the novel by Hans Fallada. Screenwriter: William Anthony McGuire. Cinematographer: Norbert Brodine. Editor: Milton Carruth. Cast: Margaret Sullavan, Douglass Montgomery, Alan Hale, Catharine Doucet, DeWitt Jennings.

35mm, b/w, 98 min.