Back to the Feature: Mildred Pierce (1945)

Perhaps the film that most defined the career of Joan Crawford, at least from the 1940s on, and how she’s popularly remembered, was Mildred Pierce. This was the film that won her her only Oscar and is still considered a high point of both the film noir and womens’ picture genres that dominated the 1940s. It was her favourite performance and is generally considered to be one of her best. A movie not quite like anything else that Hollywood was producing at the time, which I seem to say a lot, but is particularly true in this case if for no other reason than the sheer power it gives its’ women.

The protagonist of the movie is an ambitious yet well-meaning forty year old woman, the antagonist is her insolent, deceptive teenage daughter. Director Michael Curtiz didn’t want Crawford to play the title role initially, preferring someone like Barbara Stanwyck; and yet it’s clear nobody else could have played this part, she makes it completely her own. This was coming off of a two year hiatus for her, leaving MGM for Warner Bros. amidst a series of uninteresting roles. Mildred Pierce however, was a major departure for Crawford, a character with darker sides, complex relationships, and a significant degree of screen power. And after a decade of being a conventional leading lady, it’s remarkable how effortlessly she slips into that personality.

Mildred is also that rare working woman for 1940s Hollywood, ultimately a highly successful business owner and career-oriented single mother as well. And this is a significant side of her story that is portrayed relatively indiscriminately in-film, whatever else Mildred does -and additionally she’s seen to be quite good at it. Maybe this was part of what drew Crawford, who fought for the role where other actresses turned it down in fear of the implied age of the character. The restaurant, simply called Mildred’s, even becomes a franchise! It’s certainly a bold statement of feminine will and makes the film stand out in a way other noirs don’t. Crawford’s affection for and compulsion towards this character also shines through -she’s sympathetic and even a touch relatable. It’s one of the few occasions in a movie that I actually believed a Golden Age Hollywood star was a real person.

In a conversation about the film accompanying its’ Criterion release, Molly Haskell and Robert Polito talk a lot about the book that Mildred Pierce is based on, by James M. Cain. And one of the interesting points they discuss is how there is no mystery component to the book, and that the framing device of the murder of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) and police interrogation of Mildred was added as part of the Production Code mandate that required a comeuppance for villainous characters. The Code was a restrictive thing, but both critics agreed (and I do too) that the mystery actually enhances the film. We’re introduced to Mildred and her uncouth admirer Wally Fay (Jack Carson) before we get to know them, we’re given curious little details about Monte and Mildred’s first husband that prove less than honest, and a scene where Mildred attempts to frame Wally for a murder it very much looks like she committed -but it can’t be that clear cut. It’s intense and deeply interesting, and a really good hook that the movie does an excellent job setting up to leave us invested in the backstory leading to it.

There’s plenty of drama to that backstory as Mildred finds herself on the road to success surrounded and manipulated by awful people. It’s almost a Cinderella story at first: in the wake of her separation from her cheater husband, Mildred is swept away by a charming playboy who gives her the resources to pursue her own business. However at one point in the story, while vacationing with Monte, Mildred learns of the untimely death of her youngest daughter from pneumonia, and it sets the stage for a series of personal disasters for Mildred that only get more and more extreme. For as feminist as the character of Mildred is, there’s nonetheless a moralizing to how she is repeatedly punished for exercising independent agency. Her relationship with Monte is the surest sign of this as there’s a suggestion poor Kay wouldn’t have died had it not been for Mildred’s romance. She’s not allowed to have sexuality. But nor is she allowed to be a hard worker, because that is implicitly what led to Veda (Ann Blyth). It is her neglect and workaholic tendencies that perhaps created that monster, and she herself suspects so.

The film is keenly aware though that despite its’ subtextual judgment, Mildred Pierce is a tragic figure, and that tragedy begins and ends with Veda. The sixteen-year-old Blyth is the films’ breakout star, often going toe-to-toe with Crawford as the films’ clever variant on the femme fatale. On the surface she initially appears to be just a spoiled brat daughter with an overzealous disdain for her mothers’ middle-class status. But this attitude proves to be an accurate glimpse into a genuinely malevolent soul. Veda Pierce might be one of the great movie villains of the 1940s, not only for her actions but for their effect. Mildred does a lot of what she does so that she can earn her daughters’ respect, she’s borderline obsessed with it –and it never happens. Even once she’s attained that wealth and power Veda claims to want, it doesn’t change anything, as much as it may look like it does at times thanks to Veda’s deceptive cunning. Whether it’s using a fake pregnancy to weasel more money out of a dissolving marriage or feigning a change of heart as part of a plan to later betray her mother, it’s a calculated game she plays. Yet for all this, there is a modicum of empathy one can muster for Veda, who more than once demonstrates a very teenage ignorance and arrogance that dramatically backfires on her once in a while –a reminder she is just a kid after all. That’s what Mildred sees, and why she continues to give her second chance after second chance.

It mustn’t be overlooked either how much of a scumbag Monte is: initiating a relationship with Mildred long enough for her restaurant empire to flourish before creepily hitting on her daughter, then entering a marriage of convenience with Mildred purely as part of her ploy to reconcile with Veda, only to backstab them both. Just about everyone in Mildred’s life, and the men especially, are terrible –even the comparatively harmless goofball friend of the family Wally is a serial sexual harasser. Mildred’s real friend and colleague Ida (a fantastic Eve Arden) might be the best person in the whole movie, and that friendship for what we see of it is another of the films’ great spots of innovative realism.

That realism does not extend to the films’ atmosphere and style however, firmly entrenched in that high-contrast, incurably moody film noir world. Perhaps the films’ only true iconic image is of Mildred on the boardwalk in the moonlight shortly after the murder, the audience much more in the mind that she did it. It’s wonderfully evocative and expressive, as the artificial light of civilization illuminates her melancholy. There are other great lighting choices throughout the film, often to emphasize the emotions or choices of Mildred or Veda, such as in Veda’s apparently scandalous lounge singer stint (in fairness, she does get catcalled a lot); but they also allow greater tangible depth to the sets, which are quite stirring -again, that California boardwalk in particular, but also Mildred’s home and Monte’s lavish beach house.

A more book-loyal version of Mildred Pierce was made in 2011 for HBO directed by Todd Haynes and starring Kate Winslet, Evan Rachel Wood, and Guy Pearce (who is of course the natural update of Zachary Scott). I recall it winning a number of Emmys and I understand it’s generally well liked. I have no interest in it though. I just can’t fathom it being as compelling as this movie or as weirdly shocking. Seeing a story centred on a businesswoman that deals with her troubled relationships with men and a sociopathetic teenage daughter means more in the 1940s than in the 2010s. It may legitimately be among the best film noirs I’ve seen, and certainly my favourite Joan Crawford performance too. Though it also confirms to me I’ve got a lot more of her work yet to discover on both sides of Mildred Pierce.

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch

Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/