NFR Project: 'Mildred Pierce' (1945)

 

NFR Project: “Mildred Pierce”

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Scr: Ranald MacDougall

Pho: Ernest Haller

Ed: David Weisbart

Premiere: Oct. 20, 1945

111 min.

It’s the ultimate Joan Crawford movie, the one for which she won the Oscar.

It’s messed up. 

It’s a suffering-woman picture locked inside the frame of a film noir. It’s a perfect vehicle for the peculiar talents of Crawford, who transformed herself again and again, keeping her screen acting career going for 45 years. 

It has that Curtiz sheen to it. Director Michael Curtiz’s love of shadows and fog make this into an elegant-looking weepie, a film centered on a heroine more sinned against than sinning

It's derived from the 1941 novel by noted crime writer James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity). The novel does not utilize the framing action of a murder and the hunt for the killer, which in the film version gives Mildred Pierce time and space in the gritty-looking police station to flash back, reliving the circumstances that led to her interrogation.

We go back to Mildred’s first marriage, an unhappy one. She is a housewife; she has a loutish husband (Bruce Bennett) who cheats on her. They have two children, of whom Mildred is crazily fond. Mildred throws her husband out, and gets a job as a waitress (which we feel is rather demeaning for Mildred, but times being what they are). She parlays her ambition into running a chain of successful restaurants. She is a self-sufficient and prosperous businessperson.

But there are problems. One of her two children dies of pneumonia. The other, Veda (Ann Blyth), grew up to be a complete snob. She despises her mother’s source of income, but she gladly takes wads of cash from her and does whatever she pleases. Mildred blindly sees this as sacrificing everything for the welfare of her child, and on she toils, without let or hinder, brave and trusting and vulnerable. And exploited.

For comic relief, we get Jack Carson as a sleazy, horny best buddy, and Eve Arden as Mildred’s right-hand woman. Even Butterfly McQueen makes a brief appearance.

Mildred falls in love with a slimy, impoverished aristocrat, Monty (Zachary Scott as a perfectly weaselly, thinly mustachioed character), who lives off her, schemes her downfall, and, crucially, starts sleeping with Veda. Who shoots Monty to death in their beach house becomes the fulcrum of the story.

We are kept guessing, and that holds our attention. Did Mildred, saintly Mildred, break down and fill Monty full of lead?

Mostly, we see Crawford in suffering mode, a skill she displayed to perfection. In Mildred Pierce she is surrounded by liars, up against the wall, seemingly taking on all the anguish of the world. So, she is simultaneously a martyr, a victim, a survivor – even an abuser, in how she projects herself onto, living vicariously through her surviving daughter, turning her into a horrible person, her shadow self. On one level, she is a monster of ambition.

Crawford had a flinty interior that sustained her as a leading actress for decades, long after her start as a flapper in silent film. She is monolithic here. You could put Mildred’s face on Mount Rushmore.

Crawford is a peculiar kind of noir heroine – she’s led down a dark path to suspicion of murder. Her personal magnetism, her remarkable attentiveness, makes her vivid. Crawford persists.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Story of G.I. Joe.