Mildred Pierce
Composite Score: 87.33
Starring: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, and Jo Ann Marlowe
Director: Michael Curtiz
Writer: Ronald MacDougall
Genres: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery, Romance
MPAA Rating: Approved
Box Office: $5.60 million worldwide
My take on Watching This Film:
Mildred Pierce is the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel of the same name about a woman suspected of murdering her second husband and the circumstances that led to that conclusion. The film stars Joan Crawford as the titular mother, wife, and suspected murderess, while Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, and Bruce Bennett fill out the remainder of the characters in this little murder mystery (a deviation from the novel) – comprising a full cast of victims, suspects, and perpetrators. It is a film noir that explores facets of money and human relationships and the nature of being a parent while also pursuing success for oneself. The film received a total of six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for both Ann Blyth as Mildred’s spoiled daughter Veda and Eve Arden as Mildred’s friend and business partner Ida Corwin, and a win for Best Actress for Crawford. It’s refreshingly original, as noirs go, focusing on a woman rather than a man, which allows the film to genre bend into social drama and character study in a way that most male-driven noirs don’t or can’t. Across the board, the performances are fantastic, obviously with Crawford leading the way. Arden gives an impressively fun and fast-talking turn as Ida and Blyth is simply abhorrent in the most delicious ways as the spoiled daughter of a middle-class family. Likewise, the supporting men – Carson as the morally ambivalent businessman Wally Fay, Scott as the broke inheritor Monte Beragon, and Bennett as Mildred’s former husband Bert Pierce – all do their parts well in complicating the lives of both Mildred and Veda. Crawford, though, carries the film as Mildred Pierce, delivering a masterclass of understatement, mystery, and passion as she takes us through the life of this ill-fated anti-heroine. Visually, director Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Ernest Haller (Gone with the Wind) don’t give us anything incredibly outside of the norm of noir, but it’s still on the upper end of that genre in terms of its looks. The real gripe that people might bring against it now is its deviation from the source material in the addition of a murder plot, so as to provide the potential for punishing the “evildoer” in the story, as required by the Hays Code. Personally, I have no issue with the plot, and I think it serves as a strong framing device for the rest of the film’s story, but literary purists might quibble here. Ultimately, though, Mildred Pierce is a delight of a noir, taking a fresh look at the typical themes of greed and corruption and mixing them with the social dramas often seen in stories about women, led by a powerhouse performance from Joan Crawford, all coming together to make one of the Greatest Films of All Time. Currently, this film is available to rent on most streaming platforms if you’d like to watch it for yourself.
