Mildred Pierce (1945) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 40 titles created 25 Jun 2011 a list of 39 titles created 23 Nov 2011 a list of 40 titles created 28 Dec 2011 a list of 32 titles created 10 Mar 2013 a list of 45 titles created 18 Apr 2014 Search for " Mildred Pierce " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 2 wins & 6 nominations.

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Director: William Wyler 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 7.8/10 X Years after her aunt was murdered in her home, a young woman moves back into the house with her new husband. However, he has a secret that he will do anything to protect, even if it means driving his wife insane. Director: George Cukor A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he is investigating. Director: Otto Preminger A former child star torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion. Director: Robert Aldrich A private eye escapes his past to run a gas station in a small town, but his past catches up with him. Now he must return to the big city world of danger, corruption, double crosses and duplicitous dames. Director: Jacques Tourneur Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate. Director: Fritz Lang Edit Storyline When Mildred Pierce's wealthy husband leaves her for another woman, Mildred decides to raise her two daughters on her own.

Despite Mildred's financial successes in the restaurant business, her oldest daughter, Veda, resents her mother for degrading their social status. In the midst of a police investigation after the death of her second husband, Mildred must evaluate her own freedom and her complicated relationship with her daughter. Written by Jwelch5742 A mother's love leads to murder. See more » Genres: 20 October 1945 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Solange ein Herz schlägt See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia According to Ann Blyth , Joan Crawford instructed her to actually slap her in the staircase scene. See more » Goofs When Monty is pouring Mildred a drink, he asks her to say "when" for when she wants him to stop pouring, but then gives her the drink he poured for himself. See more » Quotes Policeman #1: If you take a swim, I'd have to take a swim. Is that fair? Because you feel like killing yourself, I gotta get pneumonia. See more » Crazy Credits The opening credits are presented with a background ocean scene that "washes" the credits on the screen.

See more » Connections (San Francisco, California) – See all my reviews Joan Crawford's tour-de-force as a self-sacrificing mother is a real stunner. Directed by Michael Curtiz, and based on James M.Cain's steamy novel, "Mildred Pierce" is a slick stylish sudser that ranks among the best. After a decade-long streak at MGM, Crawford, made her way over to Warner Bros. It was a brilliant move as Crawford won an Oscar (as Mildred) and ended up back on top. As the title character, Crawford brings a sense of steely determination and guts. As a devoted housewife, Mildred puts the needs of her family first. So when her husband (Bruce Bennett) begins a sleazy affair with a woman down the street, Mildred kicks him out and starts life anew. Nothing - not even one daughter's death and another daughter's selfishness - stops Mildred from working her way to the top. She goes from waitress in a greasy diner to the wealthy owner of a successful restaurant chain. But despite her achievements, Mildred must contend with a slimy lover (Zachary Scott) and her increasingly vile and spoiled daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth).

All the drama comes to a rousing climax, which culminates in a physical altercation between brat and mom. Crawford's gut-wrenchingly sympathetic performance draws you in, and the sparks that she and the wonderful Blyth create are unforgettable. Also, a playful Eve Arden as Mildred's pal, spouts off some terrific dialogue. "Mildred Pierce" is an exceptional piece of work that uses some of the finest elements of classic cinema. The story moves along at a sleek pace, and thanks to the writers, "Mildred" never sinks in the froth of its own soapiness. A powerful, emotional cinematic experience. 58 of 73 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Mildred Pierce (1945) Mildred Pierce (1945) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) Background Mildred Pierce (1945) is a classic, post-war film noir mixed with typical soap-operish elements of the woman's melodramatic picture or "weeper," including a strand of a typical murder mystery often told by flashback.

The family melodrama was significantly modified from its original source due to pressures of the Production Code regarding its sordidness - namely, the incestual behavior of the dissolute playboy character named Monte. Famed Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz (who had already directed many diverse film genres, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) , Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) , Dodge City (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), Casablanca (1942), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) , and This is the Army (1943)) shaped this significant film in the genre. Curtiz reluctantly began filming with 'has-been' star Joan Crawford, who had developed a reputation for being mannered and difficult, but was pleasantly surprised when she delivered one of the best performances of her career. This film, a tremendous box-office hit and critical success, was an adaptation by Ranald MacDougall and Catherine Turney (and William Faulkner) of James M. Cain's 1941 'hard-boiled' novel of the same name.

Cain's original novel was a satire about bourgeois values, and a tale of poor parenthood. [Cain was responsible for two sources for film noir classics - his 1936 novella for Double Indemnity (1944) and his best-selling work for Mildred Pierce (1945) .] Atypical for film noirs, the main protagonist in the film is a female - but she is typically brought down by a femme fatale - her own daughter. The intriguing murder story is told with a flashback structure reminiscent of Citizen Kane (1941) . Successful promotional copy for the film read: "Mildred Pierce - don't ever tell anyone what she did." The gripping and cynical film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Eve Arden and Ann Blyth, both with their only career nomination), Best Screenplay (Ranald MacDougall), and Best B/W Cinematography (Ernest Haller who had previously co-won the Color Cinematography Oscar for Gone With the Wind (1939) ).

Former MGM star Joan Crawford performed in the melodramatic Warners' film in an astonishing comeback role (and debut role for Warner Bros.) after a two year absence and slumping decline. [The role was first considered by Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Sheridan.] Crawford won the film's sole Academy Award Oscar (it was also her sole Academy Award win out of three career nominations) as Best Actress for her title role. She went on to star in such films as Humoresque (1946), Possessed (1947), Flamingo Road (1949) - again with Curtiz directing, the self-produced thriller Sudden Fear (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954), a string of flops in the late 50s, and then What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) . Her career really went into decline with her appearance in low-budget 60's B-grade horror films (i.e., the slasher film Berserk! (1967), The Karate Killers (1967), and her last film Trog (1970)).

The title character is a hard-working, neurotically-devoted, long-suffering and determined mother who has a status-seeking, spoiled, detestable and mean-spirited, unloving daughter named Veda (Blyth). [Mirroring her real life, Joan Crawford supported herself as a waitress and saleswoman before she began making films.] Mildred's ruinous but noble downfall occurs as the result of poor choices of men (including her dull, middle-class broker husband Bert (Bruce Bennett)) and her caring for an ungrateful Veda.

(Other films of maternal self-sacrifice for an insufferable child - before this one - include Imitation of Life (1934) with Claudette Colbert, and Stella Dallas (1937) with Barbara Stanwyck, and later would include Terms of Endearment (1983) with Shirley MacLaine.) Although Mildred's maternal sacrifice is portrayed as noble, some have claimed that the film is cautionary and anti-feminist, with Mildred presented as a typical 1940's post-war housewife whose 'American dream-fulfilling' role-switching movement from suburban, middle-class home-maker to divorced, successful business entrepreneur (restaurant-chain owner) results in corruptive, destructive disaster (both financial and personal). This was symbolized in the film in movements from bright, daytime S. California scenes to dark, criminal, nightmarish scenes. In 2011, HBO Cable TV created a five-part mini-series, directed by Todd Haynes, of the melodramatic James M. Cain story set in Depression-era Los Angeles.

It starred Kate Winslet as the frumpy title character Mildred Pierce, Morgan Turner (younger) and Evan Rachel Wood (adult) as her daughter Veda, Brian F. O'Byrne as estranged husband Bert Pierce, Melissa Leo as neighbor Lucy, James LeGros as Bert's sexually-aggressive partner, Guy Pearce as handsome playboy Monte Beragon, and Mare Winningham as Ida. The Story Oceanfront waves crash to the shore in the moonlight, rippling over and washing away each screen of the cast and credits, accompanied by Max Steiner's dramatic score. [The time period of the film extends over four years in the early 40s, including most of the war years. One of the film's posters, titled "Oh boy! Home and Mildred Pierce," promoted the idea that the film was a good date film for couples following the war's end: "Warner's Mildred Pierce is the big date of the day."] In the memorable opening scene typical of film noirs, at the dark, shadowy Beragon beach house at night, a car with its headlights on is parked in front.

A gun fires six times in rhythmic tempo, killing thin-mustached owner Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott). The murderer is unseen - a missing action shot in the film is not revealed until the end. The bullets shatter a mirror behind the victim. As the victim lurches forward, slumps over and falls to the floor in front of a flickering fire in the dimly lit room, the gun is tossed in front of the body. The murdered man's only word as he expires is the first dialogue in the film: Mildred! As the camera pans up to locate the killer, it moves toward the bullet-pierced mirror. [In the real sequence of events - revealed by the film's more complete flashbacks, there are more events that actually occurred here.] A door shuts. The car parked in front of the beach house pulls away with an unrecognizable driver. In a dissolve, on an almost-deserted, fog-shrouded oceanside pier at Santa Monica, California that same night, an unidentifed, fur-clad woman appears from the dark shadows and walks down to the end of the long pier.

[At first sight, she appears to be the film's femme fatale.] She looks distressed and tense as she pauses by the iron railing. With a fixed look, she peers down into the swirling, dark ocean, illuminated by a few pier lights and moonlight. As tears come to her eyes, a policeman appears in the scene and stands and looks at her. When she tightly grabs the railing and contemplates suicide by jumping over, the policeman raps the iron railing with his nightstick and shocks her back into reality. He asks: "What's on your mind, lady?...You know what I think? I think maybe you had an idea you'd take a swim. That's what I think." With an apathetic response, she responds: "Leave me alone." The policeman encourages her to move on: You take a swim, I'd have to take a swim. Is that fair? Just because you feel like bumpin' yourself off, I gotta get pneumonia? Never thought about that, did ya? OK. Think about it. Go on, beat it now. Go on home before we both take a swim. Mildred Pierce-Beragon (Joan Crawford) is encouraged to leave the pier and not commit suicide.

She walks back down the pier and wipes the tears from her cheek. From inside a dingy pier restaurant, Wally Fay (Jack Carson) recognizes Mildred and raps on the window to catch her attention. He comes out and asks: "What are you doing around this pigeon perch? Slumming?...You sick or something?" Noticing that she is visibly upset, he leads her inside to have a drink in his own restaurant: "For free!" [On stage in the rear of the restaurant, a female performer (later identified as Miriam (Veda Ann Borg)) is singing: You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby - a coincidental pairing of the song's title to the film's theme of a mother's love for her baby.] Wally is a former business partner (with her and her first husband) and a real estate man - and as a sexually-aggressive acquaintance, he is forever making unsuccessful passes at Mildred: Wally: You know, buying this joint was the smartest move I ever made...Right now, I'd rather talk myself into something (he rests his hand on hers). Know what I mean? Mildred: Still trying... Wally: It's a habit.

I've been trying once a week since we were kids. Mildred: Twice a week. Wally: OK. Twice. Anyhow, I'm still drawing blanks. Circumstances are difficult for Mildred and she appears fearful (or guilty). She suddenly consumes her drink, throwing it back down her throat and Wally notices: "You never used to drink it straight like that." [Four years earlier, Mildred was a non-drinker.] She lures him back to the beach house to set him up: "There's better stuff to drink at the beach house, Wally." His match ignites in front of her and he accepts her dare: "Is that a dare?...All right. I'll take it. You know, I like good stuff. Maybe this is my lucky day." Wally drives both of them to the beach house - at the door, he pauses nervously: "How about your husband?

Is he, uh, being broad-minded all of a sudden?" She confidently recognizes his smooth-talking demeanor: "You can talk your way out of anything, can't you?" As they enter the dimly-lit interior and proceed down a spiral staircase to the den/bar area, Mildred turns on a few of the lights and avoids the living room where her husband Monte Beragon's body is sprawled on the floor. As they share a drink, Wally admits that inside, his "heart is singing" but he is also very suspicious of Mildred's friendly invitation: Wally: I wonder why you brought me here tonight. I mean, all of a sudden, voom! Husband gone. Soft lights, quiet room. Opportunity. Why? Mildred: Maybe I find you irresistible, Wally. Wally: Yeah. You know, you make me shiver, Mildred. You always have. Mildred: You make love so nicely, Wally. (Mimicking him) You always have. As Wally leans over to kiss Mildred, she deliberately knocks his drink away and spills it all over.

Apologetic, but feeling "sticky," she goes to change her dress and promises Wally: "I'll only be a minute." They talk through the open bedroom door for a few moments, but then the door latch clicks shut, and Wally becomes bored drinking alone while carrying on a "one-sided conversation" with himself. Frightened, Mildred huddles against the mirror in her room, planning what to do next. She exits the beach house and runs along the beach. Realizing that he has been stood up after trying her bedroom door and finding it locked, Wally adds: "But don't get me sore." In the visually expressionistic, dramatic scene, he ascends up the spiraling staircase, visually entrapped by its circularity. (The house is a maze of rooms and staircases.) He frantically calls out for Mildred and searches for her and for a way to get out of the house. His oversized shadow, reflected in giant relief on the wall, pounds vigorously on the locked front door. (He is illuminated by a passing car with its horn blaring.) He knocks over a floor lamp in the living room, causing it to fall directly toward the corpse where it illuminates the dead body of Monte Beragon.

Perspiring, Wally looks petrified with fear and desperately wonders what to do next. He approaches the telephone, identified in close-up - as he reaches for it, it begins ringing. Wally disconnects the cord, and then rushes into another area of the house to try another door. Finding all the doors and exits locked, he breaks out the window panes of one door with a chair and kicks his way through to an outside porch, cutting himself in the process. A passing squad car shines its glaring searchlight on the house, illuminating the figure of Wally hurriedly running through the sand around the house. The police are suspicious of Wally's motives - they think he may be a thief: "This guy came through that window like he was shot out of a cannon." Cop: What were you doing in that house, pal? Picking up a few souvenirs, maybe? Wally: No, pal. Nothing petty. You know, this is a pretty big night for you...Lots of excitement. There's a stiff in there. Cop: Is that so? Oh, and I suppose you were running right down to the station to report it, huh?

In the next scene, a taxi drops Mildred off in front of her elegant house (in Pasadena). She enters the mansion's foyer where her distressed nineteen year-old daughter Veda Pierce (Ann Blyth) rushes to her, upset that two trench-coated detectives "from headquarters" are already in their living room. She is summoned for questioning by one of the men: Mildred: Why? What's the matter? Detective: I'm sorry lady. We only ask the questions. Besides, we don't rightly know what the trouble is. It's probably just something about the car - or something. Veda: At this time of night? As they leave, Mildred asks again at the front door: "What's wrong? What's the matter?" She is told: "I didn't want to say anything in front of your daughter. It's your husband. He's been murdered." The emblem of the Los Angeles Hall of Justice that is cut into the floor identifies the next locale, where Mildred is brought and flanked by the two detectives.

In the Main Office of the Criminal Division (Room 220), Mildred identifies herself as "Mildred Pierce Beragon." She is ushered into an anteroom where she is told to sit next to a detective's desk and remain silent. The clock on the back wall reads: 1:08 am. Mildred's wise-cracking friend Ida Corwin (Eve Arden), who is already seated in the office, is restrained from leaning toward Mildred and rising. Ida (always ready with a quick one-liner) quips to the cop: "Look, I bruise easy." Ida passes Wally as she is summoned away for questioning - she sarcastically greets him: "Well, what is this, the class-reunion?" Wally grimly tells Mildred: "I'll have a tough time talking my way out of this." In an often-overlooked scene that occurs in the police station, sounds are noisily over-exaggerated. A loud-ticking clock on the wall reads 2:01 am as time passes.

A reporter enters the room - and then in a smooth continuous shot, a guilty-looking Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) enters - Mildred's first husband. The clock shows 2:45 am. Sharp noises accentuate the enforced silence in the room and the mounting paranoia and fear in Mildred's mind: a pencil sharpener, footsteps, whistling, the cracking sound of a sharply-opened newspaper. Finally, a buzzer summons Mildred to talk to Inspector Peterson (Moroni Olsen): "He wants you now." Peterson begins half-embarrassed and apologetic, explaining to an unprepared, perplexed Mildred: Peterson: We don't need you. Mildred: You don't need me? Peterson: I don't know how to apologize for bringing you down here for nothing, but you understand, we had to be sure. Well, now we are sure. Mildred: Aren't you going to ask me questions? I thought you would ask me questions. Peterson explains the mechanics of how his detective work has succeeded: "Being a detective is like - well, like making an automobile.

You just take all the pieces and put 'em together one by one, and first thing you know, you got an automobile (he pauses) or a murderer. And we got him. Oh you're in the clear, Mrs. Beragon. The case is on ice. You can go now." Mildred is inquisitive and wants to know the identity of the murderer. After learning that her ex-husband confessed to the killing, Mildred protests his guilt: Mildred: No Bert, I won't let you do this. (To Peterson) What about Wally Fay? How do you know he didn't do it. Peterson: Fay had no motive. This man had. You see, Mrs. Beragon, we start out with nothing. Just a corpse, if you'll pardon the expression. OK. We look at the corpse and we say why? What was the reason? And when we find the reason, we find the man that made the corpse. In this case - him.

Peterson explains the undeniable facts of the case: the gun that committed the murder belonged to Pierce, and he didn't deny killing Beragon - in fact he thought it was a "good idea." Mildred doesn't believe that her "gentle and kind" husband (whom she divorced four years earlier) would commit such a crime. START OF FIRST MAJOR FLASHBACK In a long flashback (the first of three such flashbacks in the film), Mildred recalls the unfolding events that led to the breakup of her first marriage and to the murder. In voice-over, Mildred first explains the end of the business (real-estate) relationship between Bert and Wally, and how she was always a traditional home-maker wife in her early 30s. [Mildred's confessional begins in a brightly-lit, daytime environment, where she was married, at age 17, to a real-estate broker and was a doting super-mom to her children in a clean, suburban home in Glendale.]: He and Wally Fay were partners. For a long time, they made good money. They built a lot of houses. Suddenly, everybody stopped buying. The boom was over...Then one day, they split up.

Wally was in and Bert was out. They weren't partners anymore. That day when Bert came home, he was out of a job...We lived on Corvallis Street where all the houses looked alike. Ours was number 1143. I was always in the kitchen. I felt as though I'd been born in a kitchen and lived there all my life, except for the few hours it took to get married...I married Bert when I was seventeen. I never knew any other kind of life. Just cooking and washing and having children - (The camera pans toward a framed picture of Mildred's two beloved, teenaged daughters perched on the piano) two girls, Veda and Kay. As her dull, middle-class husband Bert flops down on the sofa with a newspaper, Mildred nags him, slightly dissatisfied by the lean financial status of their strained marriage and his loss of employment. He sourly replies: "It might be nice, Mildred, if you left me alone once for just five minutes.

When the time comes, I'll get a job." She softens her insistence: "I know you will, Bert, I was just trying to help." A delivery man brings an oblong box to the door - in it is an expensive dress for their spoiled, ungrateful, unappreciative daughter Veda, bought with Mildred's own money. Their conversation becomes a vicious argument, especially since it reflects on Bert's own struggle and inability to provide for the family: Bert: Where'd you get the money? Mildred: Baking cakes and making pies for the neighbors. That's where I got it. I earned it. Bert: That's right. Throw it up to me that I can't support my own family. Mildred: I'm sorry Bert, but I don't say half as much as most women would say with nothing but bills staring them in the face. Bert: Go ahead, keep it up. Maybe you wouldn't have so many bills if you didn't try to bring up those kids like their old man was a millionaire. No wonder they're so fresh and stuck up. That Veda!

I tell you, I'm so fed up with the way she high-hats me, that one of these days I'm gonna cut loose and slap her right in the face. Mildred: Bert, if you ever dare touch Veda, I'll... Bert accuses Mildred of buying Veda's love with blind adoration, and of channeling all her devotion to her children, especially to the demanding and taunting older daughter. Veda has been indulgently showered with gifts, nice clothes, and piano lessons, provided by Mildred's sacrificial baking of pies and cakes. Mildred's love for Bert has been unnaturally displaced and misguided to their daughter: Bert: The trouble is, you're trying to buy love from those kids - and it won't work. I'm no bargain, but I make enough to get by. But no, that isn't good enough. Veda has to have a piano and lessons and fancy dresses so she can sit up on a platform smirking her way through a piece any five-year-old with talent could play. Mildred: Veda has talent. Just ask any of the neighbors. Bert: Yeah? She plays the piano like I shoot pool.

And Kay, a nice normal little kid who wants to skip rope and play baseball. But she's got to take ballet lessons! She's going to become a ballet dancer so you can feel proud of yourself. Mildred: All right, what of it? What if I did want them to amount to something. I'd do anything for those kids, do you understand? Anything! Bert: Yeah? Well, you can't do their crying for them. Mildred: I'll do that too! They'll never do any crying if I can help it. Bert: There's something wrong, Mildred. I-I don't know what. I'm not smart that way. But I know it isn't right to... Their conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Maggie Biederhof (Lee Patrick) - another sore point in their relationship. Bert has found consolation with this 'other woman' and Mildred wonders if he is a philanderer: "She won't play gin rummy with you anymore.

It is gin rummy, isn't it?" The unhappy marriage dissolves on account of the unbalanced, smothering, obsessive, insistent maternal love of Mildred for the daughter: You might as well get this straight right now once and for all. Those kids come first in this house. Before either one of us. Maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong, but that's the way it is. I'm determined to do the best I can for them. If I can't do it with you, I'll do it without you. Bert threatens: "Let's see you get along without me for a while. When you want me, you know where to find me...I go where I want to go." Mildred breaks their marriage, calmly and sternly telling Bert to "pack up." Mildred Pierce (1945) | Classic Film Guide Classic Film Guide Posted on August 29, 2014 by Rob in Essential Films , Uncategorized // 0 Comments Mildred Pierce (1945) Joan Crawford plays the title role a mother who will do anything for her selfish daughter Veda played by Ann Blyth.

Mildred even goes into business becoming a successful restaurant owner but Veda is still ungrateful even as her mother has provided her opportunities in society. Jack Carson plays Wally Fay a man Mildred manipulates; Zachary Scott is Monte Beragon another who gets involved in a tragic love triangle of sorts with Crawford’s and Blyth’s characters. Eve Arden plays Ida Corwin a friend of Mildred’s who later becomes one of her employees that gets to say some great sassy lines including "Personally Veda’s convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young." Eventually the daughter gets herself in deep trouble and the mother’s sacrifice is made even greater. Directed by Michael Curtiz ( Casablance (1942) ) and based on the James M. Cain novel with a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall this essential drama also features Bruce Bennett Lee Patrick Veda Ann Borg and Butterfly McQueen (uncredited). Joan Crawford’s Academy Award winning Best Actress performance on her first (!) of three nominations. Also Supporting Actress Oscar nominations for Arden (her only!) and Blyth (her only as well).

The film its B&W Cinematography and MacDougall’s (his only) screenplay were also nominated. Added to the National Film Registry in 1996. Purchase this DVD now at or purchase this DVD collection now at Mildred Pierce (1945) | The Film Spectrum Mildred Pierce (1945) Producers: Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner (Warner Bros.) Writers: James M. Cain (novel), Ranald MacDougall, Catherine Turney and William Faulkner (screenplay) Photography: Ernest Haller Music: Max Steiner Cast:Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, ?Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Mornoi Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe Introduction “Everybody has a mother.” Unfortunately for Joan Crawford, her most memorable image is now one that surfaced after her death, one played by Faye Dunaway in the biopic Mommie Dearest (1981). Based on the best-selling memoirs of Crawford’s adopted daughter, Christina, the film painted her mother as an abusive monster and soiled the reputation of one the legends of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Film buffs know Dunaway’s chilling role all too well, screaming “ No wire hangers!” as one of the AFI’s 50 Greatest Villains. These revelations, however accurate or exaggerated, only underscore the motherly obsession that Crawford brought to her career role in Mildred Pierce, playing a woman who will do anything for her children, perhaps even murder, in Michael Curtiz’s noir classic. Plot Summary Adapted from a novel by James M. Cain — the second in a sort of trilogy of Cain novels converted into ’40s film noirs, arriving between Double Indemnity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) — Mildred Pierce opens in true Citizen Kane fashion: with death. Rather than “Rosebud” and natural causes, we get six shots and a man, Monte Baragon (Zachary Scott), gasping his final breath with the word “Mildred” before biting the floor of his beach house living room.

In the aftermath of the murder, Monte’s mink-clad wife, Mildred Pierce (Crawford), contemplates suicide as she’s hauled in for questioning by police, as is Mildred’s first husband, Bert (Bruce Bennett), who carries a jealous motive, and Mildred’s shamelessly-loving friend, Wally Fay (Jack Carson), who’s found lurking at the scene of the crime. From here, we enter noir flashback mode, like Sunset Blvd. five years later. This time it’s narrated by Crawford, inviting audiences to piece together the murder by examining Mildred’s volatile past, including her divorce from Bert (as Crawford did to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry in real lime), her waitress job to make ends meet (as Crawford had in real life) and her creation of her own restaurant business, an opportunity afforded to her by wealthy playboy Monte, her future second husband.

Noir Feminism The Oscar-nominated script, written by Ranald MacDougall with uncredited contributions from Catherine Turney and the great William Faulkner, is most noteworthy for its successful meshing of two genre types: the gritty film noir and the soapy “women’s picture,” even if the melodrama at times traps the film in 1945. This combo made Mildred Pierce a landmark work as the first film noir told from a female perspective. Rather than a a male hero encountering a femme fatale — as Fred MacMurray had with Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944) — here we had a female lead making her own tragic, fatalistic discoveries. Of course, her role can also be read in a negative social light, seeing as the feminist Mildred ultimately ends up reaping disaster, tragically in her undying love for her children, Veda (Ann Blyth), and Kay (Jo Ann Marlow). “I’d do anything for those kids,” she says.

“They’ll never do any crying if I can help it.” As it turns out, Mildred is the one doing the crying over them, especially Veda, played to Oscar-nominated nastiness in defining the ungrateful screen child. Crawford: Screen Legend It’s this motherly stress of trying to love an unloving daughter that ultimately reveals a sort of unhinged, semi-psychotic person within Mildred as the film nears its climax. And what a screen presence she is, those broad shoulders and powerful eyes a sight to behold, earning a spot on Premiere Magazine‘s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. Crawford’s performance won the first and only Academy Award of her career, which she accepted in a quasi-staged sickbed from home. (A) As Crawford once said, “I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.” (C) Still, Mildred Pierce had more significance to her career than a gold statue; it revitalized a fledgling career.

Prior to the film, Crawford had been a star at MGM for 18 years, transitioning from silents to talkies for hits like George Cukor’s The Women (1939). But by age 41, she had left MGM, had again earned a reputation as “box office poison” and found herself out of work for three years during the war. Mildred Pierce, Crawford’s debut at Warner Bros., broke the slump, launching a career revival under daring new directors like Nicholas Ray for Johnny Guitar (1954) and Robert Aldrich for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). The latter of which made screentime for one of Hollywood’s fiercest rivalries, between Crawford and Bette Davis, whom Crawford called a “phony,” to which Davis claimed Crawford “slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.” (B) Seeing as Davis had passed on the role of Mildred Pierce, Crawford’s Oscar win for the part must have been doubly sweet. Curtiz: The Hitmaker Crawford was not the only star to win an Oscar under the direction of Michael Curtiz.

James Cagney had done it three years earlier in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Indeed, Curtiz was a director that actors wanted to work with, a reliable Hollywood hitmaker that could boost careers with the best of ’em. Curtiz turned out an astonishing set of classics in just a seven-year span — Captain Blood (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Four Daughters (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Casablanca (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945) and White Christmas (1954). And yet, his name isn’t grouped with other masters of his day (i.e. Hitchcock, Welles, Ford). His touches were always more aesthetic than meaningful, but that makes them no less effective.

In Mildred Pierce, we get waves washing away the opening credits; a dissolve with a restaurant ticket wheel; skewed-perceptions with mirror shots; rapid pans transitioning from flashbacks to present day; and a shadowy noir atmosphere, in part due to cinematographer Ernest Heller, a previous winner for Gone With the Wind (1939). Together, Curtiz and Heller sculpt a dark atmosphere vital to Mildred’s own emotional plunge into darkness, a sort of extension of Curtiz’s own previous affinity for shadowy figures on the wall (i.e. Bogart opening the safe in Casablanca). Legacy By all accounts, Mildred Pierce was a box office and critical success, earning six nominations, including Best Picture, Screenplay (MacDougall), Supporting Actress (Blyth and Eve Arden) and Black-and-White Cinematography (Ernest Haller). While it lost Best Picture to Billy Wilder’s equally dark exploration of alcoholism, The Lost Weekend (1945), it remains Curtiz’s most haunting work. This is in no short part to Crawford’s real-life family history, which brings us back to her tumultuous relationship with real-life daughter Christina.

The real-life story was a tragic reversal of the victimization in Mildred Pierce, replacing Mildred’s positive self-sacrificing mother with a negative perception of Crawford as a child-sacrificing mother, to the point of cutting her own kids out of her will. Perhaps this was because Crawford was herself abused as a child, living homeless on a cot in her mother’s laundromat, where she helped by hanging clothes on wire hangers (the root of her “wire hanger” phobia). (A) How tragic a true tale in the face of the fictional tragedy of Mildred Pierce. A Tale of Two Mothers. Citations: CITE A: DVD Bonus Feature Documentary: Joan Crawford, The Ultimate Movie Star CITE B: IMDB Trivia Kate Winslet takes on Mildred Pierce - BBC News BBC News Kate Winslet takes on Mildred Pierce By Tom Brook BBC News, New York 24 March 2011 Close share panel Image caption Rachel Evan Wood stars as Kate Winslet on-screen daughter in Mildred Pierce This weekend sees Kate Winslet in her first major screen role, since winning an Oscar two years ago, as the title character in Mildred Pierce - a new US TV mini-series on cable channel HBO.

The British actress will be following in the footsteps of Hollywood legend Joan Crawford who famously played the part in a 1945 film noir melodrama. Winslet dominates the new five-part mini-series - appearing in nearly every scene. The actress has been getting some good reviews for the role she regards as unique. "I've never come across a female character who has such an incredible blend of both strength and vulnerability at the same time," Winslet says. Mildred Pierce is set in 1930's Depression-era California, following the struggles of a class-conscious single mother working as a waitress. 'Like a rocket' Using her entrepreneurial skills she moves up in the world to become a restaurant owner - but she never resolves her complicated relationship with her ambitious, scheming daughter. Media captionTalking Movies' Tom Brooks spoke to Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce about their new series Mildred Pierce Winslet admires her character's fortitude: "She really does make something out of herself at a time when it was incredibly hard for anyone to do that, she's like a rocket." The star is also well aware that many viewers will compare her performance to the one that brought Joan Crawford a best actress Oscar 65 years ago.

"I'm sure they probably will - I actually haven't seen the original, deliberately," she says. "I can't wait to see it now. I'm sort of dying to because I know it's a great film - I've been told by so many people. It's also a very different Mildred Pierce that we have done." The TV series draws, not from the 1945 Joan Crawford film, but from the original 1941 Mildred Pierce novel written by James M Cain. The King's Speech actor Guy Pearce, who stars opposite Kate Winslet, says the new production is "completely different because in the 1945 movie, they incorporated a murder into the story of my character, which doesn't exist in the book, and they set an entire film around that and made it a film noir". At the heart of the story is the intense relationship Mildred Pierce has with her daughter, played by The Wrestler actress Evan Rachel Wood.

'Extremely relevant' Wood describes the way mother and daughter relate as being more like lovers quarrelling and views the TV drama as "a strange love story." Image caption Guy Pearce stars as Mildred's husband, Monty Beragon The mini-series has been heavily promoted and HBO is clearly hoping for strong ratings. Early reviews have been largely favourable, but there have been complaints that the series is too slow-paced. One of the challenges has been to make the 1930's period drama resonate with a modern audience. Director Todd Haynes thinks the drama is "extremely relevant" because the tough economic times that form the backdrop to Mildred Pierce's Depression-era America are evident in the US once again. Mildred Pierce: TV Review | Hollywood Reporter Mildred Pierce: TV Review COMMENTS Slow-moving drama about a troubled mother-daughter relationship suffers from a lack of believability. TWITTER Director Todd Haynes' miniseries fails to develop the central relationship between the title character, played by Kate Winslet, and her vitriolic daughter. Everything was aligned for HBO and director Todd Haynes to make an enormous splash with the five part miniseries Mildred Pierce.

A lot of potential viewers hadn't seen the 1945 film that garnered Joan Crawford an Oscar for her role as the title character. Neither has there been much current scholarship on James M. Cain's 1941 novel. Haynes (I'm Not There, Far From Heaven) had seen some modern day parallels to the novel (Depression-era, but Los Angeles-based and more to do with class restructuring than Dust Bowl poverty) in our most recent economic downturn and was particularly intrigued by the hideously contorted unrequited love between mother and daughter. Haynes wanted to focus on how Mildred Pierce suffered from cheating husbands, economic turmoil and long odds of making it in the world as a single mother with two kids, only to complete a reversal of fortune that ultimately wasn’t nearly enough for her daughter, Veda, to appreciate. (The film with Crawford focused on Mildred's then-shocking relationships with men, living outside conventional norms, a murder and her inability to please the petulant Veda). The superb Kate Winslet stars here as Mildred, with Brian O'Byrne as her first husband, Bert, who cheats on her and is, after it becomes too much for Mildred, tossed out of their Glendale home.

Guy Pearce plays Monty, the rich slacker cad who seduces Mildred and stokes her independence. Melissa Leo is her neighbor and confidante, Lucy. And James LeGros is her business counsel (and sometime lover) Wally, who was also friends with Bert. But the central concern in Haynes' version of Mildred Pierce is Veda, played as an 11-year-old by Morgan Turner and then as a 20-year-old by Evan Rachel Wood. Indeed, it was Cain’s focus as well, with Veda meant to be spoiled and petulant at first and then increasingly mean and evil through the years. But there's an absolute disconnect on how Veda turned out this way and, more important, how Mildred would both tolerate and fuel her behavior. The miniseries begins in 1931 and Bert’s home building empire is washed out from the Depression. Veda is 11 and, as soon as we meet her, unbelievably haughty, for no discernible reason. Turner, the young actress, plays her like she descended from a BBC series.

Compared to younger sister Ray (Quinn McColgan), Veda seems like an evil alien dropped down to poison the Pierce home. Even though they live in Glendale, Veda – who plays piano – fancies herself among the upper crust and Mildred mostly endures the acid-laced talk Veda gives her. What’s not understandable here is why. So, from the moment that mother and daughter are on screen, their relationship is oddly unbelievable. There's just no connection to the behavior or the acceptance of it. If Mildred desperately wants Veda’s approval, we don’t necessarily get that from Winslet, who tolerates most but not all of young Veda’s indifference and acting out (she’s not afraid to spank her, for example) with a look that says perturbed, not overtly hurt by the unrequited nature of their relationship. This is a crucial fault, because it never leaves the miniseries during its 7 hours and 15 minutes spread over five chapters. We get glimpses of Veda's bitterness. With her father out of the house and shacked up with another woman, Mildred – gasp – has to work.

(In the final hour, Mildred talks to Bert and says that before the Depression they lived as well as anyone in the country, a sentiment that might have been handy five or so hours earlier.) The only job Mildred can get to support Veda and Ray is a waitress job. It’s an idea that disturbs Mildred but, hey, the toll of the Depression isn’t over. Her kids need to eat. She’s a lousy waitress at the beginning, but she has a side business making pies, something she’s done at home for a while. And that’s the key turnaround for Mildred. One of the best clues to Mildred’s feeling about her eldest daughter is almost missed – a barely whispered statement to Veda at the end of part two that is at first too subtle and then, upon deciphering it, not backed by much evidence. What we witness through the hours (HBO will air the first two chapters together on the 27th) is an admirable tale of Mildred, working with Wally’s backing, opening her own restaurant, succeeding in a man’s world. Meanwhile, Veda continues to be something of a child prodigy at piano, and Mildred foots the bills.

There’s a very slow pacing to Mildred Pierce but not one that should come as a surprise to fans of HBO, which lets its creative people tell full stories. And yet, you begin to wonder when events will accelerate or explanations will be given. Neither occurs much in the two years encompassing part three. But part four suddenly lurches forward four years and circumstances have improved greatly for Mildred. Here's where we're introduced to Wood’s version of Veda. She's less overtly hostile toward her mother – until a well-respected music teacher gives Veda the bad news. She not the talented pianist everyone (especially Mildred) imagines. While Veda spirals into bad behavior and some of her monstrous tendencies reveal themselves to Mildred, we still don’t quite get enough storytelling as to why Mildred should be the one to blame. Nor is it clear, other than a mother’s love for her child, while Mildred seems so resentful of being shut out of Veda’s life. The girls has been a royal pain in the ass for most of her life. Let her fly free for a while. It's worth noting that noir is missing here, replaced by ever-increasing melodrama.

From the first to the last part of the miniseries, Haynes has a fascination with shooting from behind and through glass, but the stylistic tic doesn’t reverberate with much metaphor, if that’s what was intended. The last two parts of Mildred Pierce pick up the pace exponentially, but there’s a strange rush to it all and an almost too-pat coming together of lives and story. Leo’s role is strong but not flashy. (Mare Winningham gives a strong performance in a smaller role. Hope Davis has a cameo.) Pearce’s upper-crust descent is an almost happy-go-lucky spiral, which wonderfully conceals his later actions. And O'Byrne's steadiness as Bert makes him the most likeable character here. But when all the storytelling is coming to a climax, there's something missing – the same connection that was absent between Mildred and Veda from the start. It could have been in the adaptation – a loss of Cain's hardened belief that some people just ain't no good. It could be that Winslet's choice to dial back the melodrama in Mildred is what hurts the cause.

She seems more like a mother who can’t figure out what she did wrong, rather than one who believes her daughter can do no wrong and thus obsequiously kisses her feet. That essential connection – super needy mother, withholding, vicious daughter – isn’t fully developed. It could be that Haynes' vision of a sweeping mother-daughter story wants for a complexity, a vast emotional grandeur, that the writing doesn’t give us. Or it could be that Mildred Pierce plays better as hardcore noir, where motivations begin and end inside dark hearts – no explanation necessary. Email: Tim.Goodman@THR.com. Follow: .

Question: Which actress played the title role in the 1945 film, "Mildred Pierce"?
Answer: JOAN CRAWFORD