Curtiz: Mildred Pierce (1945)
Mildred Pierce artfully fuses the bourgeois self-hatred of classical noir with the commodity fetishism of domestic melodrama; or, alternatively, relocates the skewed mother-daughter relationship from the periphery to the centre of the noir universe, explicating the real victim of the femme fatale as her unsuspecting, devoted mother. Not only are Mildred's (Joan Crawford) various acts of self-sacrifice insufficient for her firstborn Veda's insatiable greed, but they effectively invert the relationship, paving the way for Veda's co-option of her lover. This, in turn, produces a more general slippage of the female universe, in which every relationship seems to bespeak some ulterior motive, from the almost-lesbian register in which Mildred and her second-in-command communicate ("Good old Ida - you can talk it over with her man to man"), to the ambiguous role played by her ex-husband's lover. In this way, Curtiz evokes a violent, incestual, feminine insularity ("Alligators have the right idea - they eat their young") that both militates against the liberating connotations of Mildred's professional success, and ultimately identifies her with exactly the hard-boiled misogyny, or at least masculinity, of classical noir - with the critical difference that this trait is now purified so as to exclude the spectrum of pathetic, ingratiating men that populate the film, presumably by virtue of having passed through an even bleaker source of claustrophobic entrapment than the urban nightscape; that is, the domestic nightscape, imbued with all the coldness and indifference of the ocean against which the climax occurs.
Billy Stevenson
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One of my favourite noirs, and favourite films about "mothers", it's a refreshing venture in as you mention, a genre that is dominated by masulinity. It works especially well as a companion to Ophuls' The Reckless Moment, a very different take on the loving mother.
It is rare to see a film every bit as good as its novel. This film is one example that lives up to that hype.
Joan Crawford was considered 'box office poision', 'too old', 'washed up', often too difficult to work with - in Mildred she delivers probably her best performance. I don't really consider her an outstanding actress (well not compared to Bette) but in this movie she really shines and an Oscar well deserved. Sound credits also to Ann Blyth (Veda) and Eve Arden (Ida Corwin) who put in stellar performances.
I even enjoyed .
Thank you James M. Cain for giving me much delight in reading your excellent crime story of the same name in 1995. Now, I know why I love film noir - the excellent stories behind the films. The books were often sound vehicles for producing interesting productions, when the stories were A+++ such as The Big Sleep, and the films were spot on - they are simply HOT!
How could a film not be good when it has such gems as:
Ida Corwin: "Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young."
Veda: "With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture. And this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls."
I've found a wonderful publisher that reprints Pulp Fiction novels www,hardcasecrime.com - all the big crime authors are here from the 1940s / 1950s, which inspired many of the wonderful film noirs from that period. If interested I strongly recommend buying the books from overseas - I saw two of these books for $16.95 *AUD* at Borders,while the RRP in Australia is $10.95 *AUD*, I managed to buy these books for $8.50 **AUD* by sourcing them overseas - includes shipping. I can't wait to read them.