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Film Description
A mink-coated Joan stands on a jetty in the dead of night ready to jump. Cue the most celebrated study of fraught matriarchy in the annals of American cinema. If Charlotte Vale IS Bette Davis, Mildred Pierce will always be La Crawford. Featuring Ernest Haller's exemplary noir visuals, Max Steiner's sumptuous score, Ranald MacDougall's flashback-structured screenplay providing characteristic one-liners for Eve Arden, and presenting the 17-year-old Ann Blyth as a precocious femme fatale.
A masterful blend of melodrama and film noir, Mildred Pierce is famously the film that saved Joan Crawford from career oblivion. Having been labelled “box office poiso... more >
A masterful blend of melodrama and film noir, Mildred Pierce is famously the film that saved Joan Crawford from career oblivion. Having been labelled “box office poison” and dropped by MGM, she turned to Warner Brothers, agreeing to audition for a role turned down by three other actresses to play a working mother, a far cry from her glamorous siren roles of only a few years before. It remains one of the shrewdest career choices in Hollywood history, for the role revitalised her stardom, earning her a well-deserved Oscar in the process.
Opening with an unseen murder, followed by the iconic image of Crawford suffering in mink as she is interrogated by the police, the pace soon slows as we are told the preceding story in flashback, as Mildred struggles to cope after her husband walks out. She lavishes luxuries upon her spoilt daughter Veda (Ann Blyth), one of the screen's great villainesses, whose unrestrained ruthlessness soon results in disaster. Blyth is marvellous, spitting out venomous lines with relish, but this is Crawford's show; she is compelling in every scene she's in, re-establishing herself as one of Hollywood's greatest stars. < less
The Joan Crawford movie for people who dont care for Joan Crawford. Ranald MacDougalls flashback-structured screenplay providing characteristic one-liners for Eve Arde... more >
The Joan Crawford movie for people who dont care for Joan Crawford. Ranald MacDougalls flashback-structured screenplay providing characteristic one-liners for Eve Arden, and presenting the 17-year-old Ann Blyth as a precocious femme fatale. < less
