Many film directors dream of ending their careers with high notes, and few succeeded in making such a dream a reality as much as Douglas Sirk did. His 1959 melodrama, *Imitation of Life*, is considered not only one of his best and commercially most successful films but also one of the iconic works of 1950s Hollywood. Based on the 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst, a popular author who liked to use sentimental melodramatic…