MILDREDPIERCE
DIRECTED BY: MICHAEL CURTIZ - WRITER: JAMES M. CAIN (novel)
STARRING: JOAN CRAWFORD, EVE ARDEN, ANN BLYTH, ZACHARY SCOTT, JACK CARSON
RELEASED: I945

Whether Mildred Pierce is a murder mystery masquerading as a soap opera or vice versa; it's a satisfying picture about women that can easily be enjoyed by men. The film opens with one of the main characters being shot repeatedly in a posh beach-house in Santa Monica; as he dies he utters the name "Mildred"; the filmmakers had plagiarized the idea from Citizen Kane (I94I). Later we're introduced to all the main characters as they're brought into the police station to determine who the killer is, and the scene here is well done as a combination of enforced silence and nervous anticipation.

The story is told in flashback by Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) as a rags-to-riches woman, instead of man, at the wheel for a change. This must have pleased all the Rosie-the-riveter's who'd done factory work in WWII, and felt empowered by helping the war effort. In case it didn't, there are more love angles than a Kama Sutra guide. Joan leaves hubby and becomes a waitress to make a living. Before long she's got five restaurants; but not a day older, as so often happens in the movies. But her daughter Vita has gotten older, and mom's new beau, Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) has noticed. Vita and Monte have some things in common, including narcissism, snobbery, and love of luxury - but not work. All the suspicions the bourgeois have about the rich are trotted out and examined in the character of Monte.

Monte's crimes are endless, beginning with being from old money, which automatically made him a snob. Perhaps his biggest crime is living in Pasadena, which was the bete noir town of forties films because it was everything Hollywood and Beverly Hills wasn't; Wasp old money, with a lot of stock brokers and doctors also in residence. Movie folks were definitely not living there and wouldn't have felt welcome if they did. So the phrase "from Pasadena" was handy movie code for rich jerks and society page dames. Monte shows Mildred his Pasadena estate mansion, calling it an "old tomb". But Monte has a dual personality, because he has a place at the beach, which seems to be okay with the film, because the film colony had beach houses too. When Mildred falls in love with Monte, it's at his beach house, but when they live together in the Pasadena manor house she's not in love with him anymore, and things go badly.

Mildred Pierce was a comeback role for Joan Crawford, who'd been dropped by MGM as too old for leading parts. She trained for the film like an athlete, and it was make-or-break time for her career. Director Michael Curtiz didn't want Crawford for the part and told Jack Warner, "She comes over here with her high-hat airs and her **mn shoulder pads...why should I waste my time directing a has-been?" This from a man who'd been working in film since I9I2. Curtiz demanded Crawford prove her suitability by taking a screen test, which was ridiculous for a woman with scores of films to her credit; it functioned mainly to see if she still looked good enough. Curtiz was known as the director of action adventure films including many of the Errol Flynn classics like Robin Hood. He was capable of great work if he had the right ingredients, and had directed Casablanca three years earlier.

Crawford's role as the long-suffering mom is almost saintly, but the halo around her head was too tight a fit. In Mildred Pierce, she's very convincing when delivering the lines "give her a good scrubbing" about her daughter, and "get out before I kill you" to her other daughter. In real-life she'd adopted a son and a daughter, and from what we now know about her home life; based on the memoir her adopted daughter wrote called Mommie Dearest (also a film) recounting the abusive and traumatic upbringing she received at the hands of Ms Crawford; we can understand the unusual force of her delivery of those lines. It's almost as if the script-writers had known some of the facts of life at chez Crawford; the rumor mill operated just as much in those days. Being aware of that, we can only try to suppress throwing-up at the spew about how heroic her struggle is to give her kids a good life. In real-life Joan's kids were packed away to boarding school when they came of age.

Mildred Pierce is full of acting talent; a gold mine is Ida (Eve Arden), who provides sarcastic comic relief. To a meek little accountant, "Come here and let me bite you". To a man obviously ogling her, "Leave something on me; I might catch cold". Ms Arden would later have a hit comedy television series, and was funnier than Lucille Ball in her wickedly sarcastic way. Bruce Bennett as Mildred's first husband plays his usual slightly creepy outsider role he had trademarked and would play again in The Treasure of Sierra Madre (I948). Jack Carson plays a meat-headed wheeler-dealer, and this might have been his finest role.

Mildred Pierce is Joan Crawford's vehicle. All the men in her life revolve in an orbit around her, and two of them pant slavishly at the site of her legs and her very ordinary un-ripped forty-year-old body. Those men - they only want one thing. As she rises in the business world, her clothes get fancier, until she's wearing mink coats and drinking straight whiskey. Crawford won the Oscar for her performance; she claimed she had the flu on Oscar night; when she found out she had won, she miraculously recovered and held a bedside press conference. All the men in the film are weak in one way or another, and none of them become more than a Ken-doll to her Barbie. Of the three men closest to Mildred; one's a dog-like stepping-stone; one's a romantic cad; and the third's a grouch who can't make a living; talk about stereotypes. Besides being good melodrama, Mildred Pierce is an interesting opportunity for men to get a peak into the world of women; their hopes and dreams, and their relationships to their men, at least as seen by Hollywood in I945.

These post WWII big-budget studio films were the last hurrah for the Joan Crawford/Bette Davis types. In five years a new more naturalistic type of acting was going to sweep all before it. Starting with Streetcar Named Desire (1951) which landed like a bombshell; and Sunset Blvd. (I95I); a new generation of actors led by Marlon Brando, William Holden, James Dean, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe would become the new names everyone knew. Mildred Pierce is the hallmark big studio product of the post-WWII era, with strong script and solid performances from the studio actors. Photography and art direction are subordinated to strong plot lines, juicy sexual innuendoes, and murder, with payoffs at the end that would satisfy the audience. The heroine, down but not out, walks into the sunset at the end; probably not the ending James M. Cain wrote. This kind of movie-making was already becoming passe; and would die-out completely in just a few years with the death of the studio star system. But films like Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Double Indemnity; all from James M. Cain novels, showed that with a good story, and good scripts with brisk dialogue; the studios were well able to make entertaining films.

scenes from the film: Original Trailer --- Vita Gives It to Mom --- A Drink with Monte

Notes:

(a) Crawford wanted to play the title role in Mildred Pierce, but Bette Davis was the studio's first choice. However, Davis did not want to play the mother of a seventeen year old daughter and she turned the role down.
(b) In November 1978, a year and a half after Joan Crawford's death, her daughter Christina published an exposé entitled Mommie Dearest which contained allegations that Crawford was emotionally and physically abusive to her and her brother Christopher. Many of Crawford's friends and coworkers, including Van Johnson, Ann Blyth, Marlene Dietrich and others denounced the book, categorically denying any abuse. Crawford's rival Bette Davis, however, strongly supported the book, saying that Christina could not have made it up (Davis would herself become the target of her own daughter, B. D. Hyman's, tell-all book in 1985, My Mother's Keeper). The book became a bestseller and was later made into the 1981 film Mommie Dearest, starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford. Marlene Dietrich's daughter also wrote a memoir detailing abuse.
(c) Mildred's voice-over says that she originally lived in a neighborhood "where all the houses looked alike". The house depicted is a small one-story Spanish-style home. But when we get to interior shots, the house sprouts a second story with a large staircase.
(d) Bruce Bennett, who plays Mildred's first husband, was an athlete who competed in the I928 Olympics. When he traveled to Mexico to play in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he was widely recognized from Mildred Pierce. "Señor Mildred Pierce", shouted his Mexican fans.