Mildred Pierce
1945
Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Anny Blyth, Bruce Bennett, George Tobias, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Jo Ann Marlow and Barbara Brown
Written by: Ranald MacDougall. Based on the novel by James M. Cain
Directed by: Michael Curtiz
The first thing I noticed about one of the great film-noirs in American Cinema is that it's kind of light on the film noir part. The film-noir in the film seems to be only part of the framing device. I've never read the novel so I don't know if that same device was used there.
I've been wanting to see Mildred Pierce for years and like many aspiring cinefiles there are holes in your viewing because, let's face it, it's hard to see all the great films. Especially since the advent of Skinamax. It's kind of hard to believe that I've never actually seen The Deer Hunter, but I have seen The Dean Humper somewhat by accident, I swear. Because TCM runs this film all the time I would put it off because it's sure to appear again in another month or so. When I heard that HBO was going to to a mini-series based on the book I decided that I really needed to sit down and watch this film.
Mildred Pierce is about a hardworking woman whose husband is having an affair. She's had enough and decides that she wants a divorce. He leaves and she's forced to raise her two daughters, Vida and Kay, by herself. Vida, the eldest, is spoiled and embarrassed by her place in the world, and her mother tries to give her only the best. The youngest, Kay, is a tomboy who Mildred is trying to reform of her tomboy ways with ballet lessons and such. Mildred bakes pies and cakes to sell to the neighbors to make extra money to afford the piano lessons and ballet classes. Like many parents, Mildred wants to give her children everything she never had.
After struggling to find a job she finally gets one waitressing and being smart and resourceful, works hard until she's the best waitress and knows the restaurant business inside and out. Soon she takes whatever savings she has, and along with the help of a lazy millionaire, opens her own restaurant. It is a wild success and within a few years she has franchised Mildred's around the Los Angeles area and now has four locations. She is a huge success but she still cannot get the respect of her daughter. Throughout the film that is the only thing she really wants.
The film opens with the murder of a dapper man at a Malibu beach house and then is told in flashback as Mildred recounts the story to the police. The film almost feels like it comes from two different genres. film-noir in the framing and a Douglas Sirk melodrama in the flashbacks. This is not a dig because I think the film does a great job of balancing both.
The film is directed by Michael Curtiz. He does a fine job going between the two genres and the film-noir section of the film looks fantastic. Curtiz is one of those directors who made a number of great films that include The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy and Casablanca among others. Curtiz directed his fair share of classics but he isn't the legend of a Billy Wilder, Frank Capra or William Wyler. It seems to me that he's the victim of the Auteur Theory, as defined by François Truffaut. His direction is functional and competent but you can never see his fingerprint like you can Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford.
The performances are solid as reflected in the number of Acadamy Award nominations. Both Eve Arden and Ann Blyth were nominated for Best Supporting Actress with Joan Collins taking home the Best Actress statue.
Another thing I noticed about Mildred Pierce that we don't see enough of today: strong female characters. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule (most recent Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine) but for every Blue Valentine or The Kids Are All Right we get a dozen daffy Katherine Heigel movies about career women who usually work at fashion magazines and can't find the validation of a hot man. In Mildred Pierce and many film from the era, women were either on level playing fields with men or were far superior to them. It's the latter in this film. The men in Mildred Pierce are either conniving, lazy or buffoonish horn-dogs. I wonder if this has to do with women's place in the world of the 40s was mostly subservient to men. Now that things are leveling out, and based on the numbers of women in college versus men, women are sure to pass men in the future workforce, I wonder if the movies of the future will reflect this. In fifty years is some daring filmmaker going to show us his holographic take on Cain's novel in Melvin Pierce?
There's a reason Mildred Pierce is considered a classic, because it's an A.
Les
Here's the trailer:
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