The story of an abusive parent is a tale as old as time, and sadly, a reality for many – from the exploitation of finances and constant verbal vilification, to emotional manipulation that makes the victim feel like escape is a pipe dream. What’s significantly more unheard of is the tale of a spoiled and entitled child very intentionally destroying the mind and the livelihood of a loving parent, whose only crime is making every sacrifice imaginable for them. Directed by Michael Curtiz, this is the framework for the 1945 melodramatic film noir Mildred Pierce, which is based on the 1941 novel by James M. Cain and stars the well-renowned (and to some, infamous), Joan Crawford – who won her first and only Academy Award for the title role.
With his dying breath, Mildred Pierce‘s her second husband, Monte, utters her name after he’s shot to death by an unseen figure in the opening scene – the picture is a film noir after all, and these are typically instigated by a murder. After exhibiting some unusual behaviour and seeming to consider jumping to her death at a pier, Mildred then invites a male friend home for drinks (and perhaps more), before suddenly slipping out of the house and locking him inside. She’s informed of her husband’s death and brought to the police station for questioning, only to be kept waiting for hours and suddenly told she’s not needed as they believe they’ve caught the killer, Mildred’s first husband, Bert. Desperate to convince the police of his innocence she begins spinning her tale, starting with her separation from Bert after his consistent unemployment and infidelity, and her dissatisfaction as a housewife.
The true instigation to the plot, however, isn’t the mysterious murder of one husband or the separation from another, but is in fact Mildred’s eldest daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth). She loudly expresses her disgust and disdain for a new dress her mother bought for her – which Mildred earned her own money to pay for by working hard baking goods to sell to her neighbours. Thus begins a vicious cycle that’s both persistently infuriating to the audience, and unabashedly devastating for Mildred.
For those like me who were mainly familiar with Crawford from her depictions in in Feud and Mommie Dearest, she’s utterly unrecognisable as Mildred Pierce
Despite being a child for the entire duration of the story, fans commonly and half-jokingly refer to Veda as the true overarching villain of Mildred’s story, and quite frankly, I’m afraid I can’t really manage to scrape up any evidence to convince myself nor anyone else otherwise. From the very beginning, every single decision Veda makes can only be seen as a sly, spiteful and petty scheme designed to exploit her mother – which, if you put yourself in the shoes of a terrible person who’d do anything to get it, wanting money and a lavish lifestyle is still a somewhat understandable motivation. She also, very deliberately, causes her mother suffering and heartache, and make Mildred’s life as difficult as humanly possible – no matter how hard she works to improve it.
Veda’s resentment towards her mother and desire for riches and adoration completely dissolve any traces of the basic love and compassion a teenage girl might possess for a parent who turned their entire life around to please them. Yes, I’m aware that saying Veda transforms into an unsettlingly manipulative sadist before our very eyes sounds dramatically over-the-top if you’ve yet to see the film, but trust me – I’m not exaggerating. You’ll watch the end credits roll while seething with rage, and you’ll sit in confusion as to how something so frustrating to witness can still leave you feeling satisfied that you experienced it, and when that passion’s somewhat relaxed, you’ll want to go through the entire ordeal a second time.
My biggest sin in writing this review is taking so long to mention the lead performance of the late and legendary Joan Crawford. Aside from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Mommie Dearest – the controversial memoir written by her own daughter (and later adapted into a motion picture starring Faye Dunaway), Crawford is best known as the face of the psycho-biddy subgenre of thriller films and for her iconic feud with Baby Jane co-star Bette Davis. This “argument” didn’t end even when death parted them, and it’s excellently portrayed by Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon in Fued – a TV anthology by Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen and Michael Zam. These things forever cemented Crawford in the eyes of the public as a petty, cynical woman who was impossible to know, and even more difficult to say a kind word about. However, before Bette Davis and Mommie Dearest, before the concept of a “psycho-biddy”, and beyond a mere insult to women losing their sense of reality with age, there was Mildred Pierce.
For those like me who were mainly familiar with Crawford from her depictions in in Feud and Mommie Dearest, she’s utterly unrecognisable as Mildred Pierce – the dissatisfied mother and housewife who strives for more for herself and her young daughters. From her very first frame on screen, Crawford’s Academy Award-winning performance remains achingly vulnerable and unabashedly authentic in her heartbreaking desperation even as we watch her maintain her stiff-upper-lip working class attitude typically adopted by women shouldering the responsibilities left by the men in their lives in a post-war era — rumour has it, in fact, that the film was deliberately kept from release until after the end of the Second World War to ensure relatability for its female audience. Crawford, however, has the devastating ability to elicit the upmost empathy from the viewer regardless of demographic; the plight of one struggling to support a family under the suffocating oppression of patriarchy and capitalism is one not exactly difficult to comprehend even almost eight decades after the film’s release, adding to the timelessness of Crawford’s performance despite the aesthetic and structure of the picture cementing itself as a noir that could’ve only been created during Hollywood’s Golden Era.
With the release of a Criterion 4k/Blu-Ray transfer sharpening every frame to the point of almost looking as if it were merely filmed yesterday, audiences can now submerge themselves into this masterpiece and truly suspend their disbelief that they are witnessing a fictional narrative rather than a timeless mirror held up to the world we are experiencing today — and I cannot recommend enough that you do so, whether you have seen the film a thousand times before already, or you are a brand new fan in the making. Mildred Pierce is a universally accessible adventure that does indeed deserve to be accessed and experienced by all, young and old, man and woman, rich or poor, and should continue to be discussed and analysed for decades to come; some day, perhaps, when we have eventually escaped and survived this seemingly-neverending economic crisis, we will even be able to watch this picture one more time and say to ourselves: “thank God that’s over” — a phrase I guarantee you will never once be uttered as a sigh of relief once the end credits roll, except perhaps in relief that Mildred’s ordeal is finally done… until the urge for a repeated viewing wins over once again, which I promise it inevitably will. Give Mildred Pierce in all its new highest-definition glory a chance, and be sure to keep the discussion of its — and Joan Crawford’s — legacy alive.
Mildred Pierce is Out Now on Criterion Collection 4K Blu-Ray
