Noirish shadows of Mildred Pierce

For your netflixian consideration....

“Mildred Pierce (Keepcase)” (Michael Curtiz)

This potent mixture of melodrama and film noir was nominated for six Oscars and features a standout performance by Joan Crawford. When police interrogate restaurateur Mildred Pierce (Crawford) after finding her second husband dead, will her obsession with her selfish oldest daughter (Ann Blyth), cause Mildred to sacrifice herself to protect her child? This double-sided disc also contains the documentary Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star.

David Denby of The New Yorker writes:

Mother Load


In the early forties, Joan Crawford left the suffocating glamour of M-G-M and entered the noirish shadows of Warner Bros. Her second film there was the startling “Mildred Pierce,” from the James M. Cain novel, which is perhaps more candid about money and social status than any American movie of the period.

...Crawford is the poor divorcée Mildred, who works as a waitress, then starts a restaurant, then a chain of restaurants, and finally marries the quintessential heel, Zachary Scott, all to satisfy the snobbish demands of her daughter, Ann Blyth, who resents her mother’s common origins. Crawford’s performance is convincing and intelligent, and the bitterness feels genuine (Crawford herself was a wrong-side-of-the-tracks girl who struggled for respect). Like other good forties movies, “Mildred Pierce” starts with a murder and then works back to the roots of the crime. The director, Michael Curtiz, keeps the palette dark and rich and the psychological undertones resonant.

Haven't seen it yet, but sounds good to me. I have a deep and forbidding love for the 'noirish shadows' of 1940s Warner Bros. films. Not all are excellent, but so many are that I am always keen to see more.

Tags: Film, /film_history, /film_snob, /Netflix