Mildred Pierce

Usually when people find success and money, they're doing it for gratification and happiness. The more money Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) makes, and the more success she has, the less it seems to matter to her personally. In this 1945 melodrama, Mildred gets knocked down in the first reel, and gets kicked while she's down. She continues to get kicked throughout the whole film, even after getting back up - and you're not quite sure who's to blame. Everyone, I guess. There aren't many characters who don't have a smudge on their soul in this, although that particular seed of thought is planted at the very outset - when Mildred invites a man over on false pretenses, planning for him to take the fall for a murder he didn't commit. When the cops finger someone completely separate to her scheme - her ex-husband - Mildred is forced to talk, and thereby she narrates the story through flashbacks, and we rewind to a time when everything was seemingly happy and normal.

Mildred has a few men in her life. First her husband, Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) just ups and leaves her - but not before delivering a whole dump of exposition and foreshadowing. Then there's Wally Fay (Jack Carson), whose continual, never-ending attempt to light up some kind of romance between them seems to have prompted Mildred to frame him for murder. They seem like friends, but Wally is the kind of male friend who requires a lady keep pepper spray or mace at close hand. Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) rounds out this trio of heels, and the only difference between him and Wally is the fact that Mildred gives in to his constant pressuring after a while and convinces herself that she must love him if she's willing to go that far just to ease the tension. Mildred spends much of the film either fending of this or that amorous advance, or needing to discuss business at the peril of being pressured into bed.

It was a man's world concerning business as well, and Mildred's entrepreneurial spirit means that her waitress friends aren't her equals for long. She has two daughters, and Mildred Pierce hinges on the spoiled older one, Veda (Ann Blyth) - who happens to be a monster. Veda is the reason Mildred is doing any of this, and the more she gives to her the more Veda complains that it simply isn't enough. One heartbreaking early scene has Mildred, unseen, listening on as Veda explains to her other daughter, Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe) that the gift of a dress she's been given is completely inadequate and how she'd be ashamed to be seen in it. This is what drives Mildred on to become what she does, without realising that it's a bottomless pit. Sad Mildred. Joan Crawford won an Oscar for this role - and she turned the win into a bizarre bed-side spectacle, apparently feigning illness on Oscar night. Her reasoning for doing what she did changed over the years, but in the end it made her win more memorable than many others.

Mildred Pierce was a bit of a tough watch for me. I didn't want to see Mildred have to fight such a tide of ill fortune, shady friends, poisoned children, bad business and murder. What did she do to deserve all of that aside from spoil her daughter? The movie itself is very well made though, and along with some good performances benefits from Ernest Haller's versatile cinematography, and Max Steiner's oft-present, very nice, dramatic score. It feels unusual (in a good way) to segue from normal dramatic scenes, lit like any old drama, and then find ourselves in a police station or deserted beach house, with the lighting quite dramatically toned down, and shadows dominating. It feels like a real combination of two genres, and took me by surprise. Noir probably dominates in that we have Joan Crawford's narration, and the story is told in flashback, but melodrama is the meat on it's film noir bones.

So - we're not so much about steamy sensual passion in Mildred Pierce, and that definitely means we're into money territory. I forget which is meant to make the world turn, but it definitely creates a swirl here and creates a passion all of it's own that'll lead to murder in the end. We see this in fiction - a family that seems a picture of happiness before money starts to put pressure on relationships much like fat does a person's body. But before I sign off making this film sound like a suffocating, stressful ordeal, I have to pay tribute to Eve Arden who plays Mildred's compatriot Ida - she's often ready with a quip and continues on always untouched by the madness and drama that surrounds Mildred Pierce. She sparkles so much she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Yeah - there's an easy breezy air to much of this film to stop us from becoming too gloomy. I credit that to Ranald MacDougall and his canny instinct to balance everything out. Still - in the end, someone is going to have to pay for that dead body in the beach house. Will it be Mildred?