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How others will see it. Since the film is in color, it does appeal to a wider audience. Modern viewers will cry, laugh, or both at the emotionally wrenching crises near the end of the movie, and may wonder at the fifties film morality, which forces Turner to be a widow to be a single mother (she never once discusses her first husband), and she apparently goes without sex for ten years despite the ardent admiration of a playwright (Dan O'Herlihy) and bedroom-voiced Mr. Steve (John Gavin).
How I felt about it. More interesting than Turner's Doris Day-style morality is the film's real story, which involves Sarah Jane's rejection of her black heritage. If America is a melting pot, folks should be allowed to select their race, as they do their clothes or vocation. If Sarah Jane decides to be white, let it be so, but her mother and Turner do seem to be determined to make her into a negro, when she actually looks Italian. She'll probably have to flee to Italy to escape her meddling, smothering mother, who seems to have forgotten that fletchings have to leave the nest sometime.
Due to the intensity of its themes, Imitation of Life is more than a reminder of 1959 American culture, which struggled with forced segregation, unlike today, when segregation is theoretically voluntary while no less in force. Hollywood was self-conscious by 1959. Black supporting actresses still played maids, but now they were saintly maids, who merit Mahalia Jackson to sing at their wake.
The theme of men as scoundrels ages better. Night club owners and their drunken letcher customers are eager to hire the presumably white Sarah Jane. Turner's agent is too much a man of the world. O'Herlihy loves Turner, but only as long as she will play the lead in his next play. Gavin loves Turner as well, but she'll have to give up her career and become Mrs. Cleaver to suit his 1950s idea of marriage.
Imitation of Life answers the question of whether Turner is a blonde bombshell or a credible actress. Of course, she's both. She does much better than Sandra Dee, who is so perky that you want to slip her a tranquilizer. She's also better than John Gavin, who practices his melliflous voice but has a stolid screen personality.