Mildred Pierce (1945) +

A pitch-perfect genre treat that somehow is able to maneuver several genres at once. As a visual feast, it's a fabulous noir -- broad angles, high shadows, crazy California locations all converging to make for a sumptuous visual treat. As a women's picture, it's a deliciously melodramatic weepie in which female strength and fortitude are commingled with conniving and deceit to make for an emotionally thick saga of female relationships. As a glamorous romance, it's twisty and turny with something akin to true love prevailing. The mystery tension is there. The characters are there. The romantic intrigue is there. And the visuals are certainly there. It's very nearly a perfect feast of mid1940s Hollywood treats -- which is exactly why the camp pleasures of this film are also so renowned. It's two full hours of big-shouldered broads telling each other what's what while Joan Crawford plays the martyr, with a couple of slapfests and a contrasting set of negligible hunks in the mix to keep things truly entertaining. And, truly, the shoulder pads in this picture are formidable. There are times when Joan Craword is wearing a particular fur coat -- the one she's wearing during the framing narrative sequences -- that she sorta looks like one of those old commercials where the dancing girls are wearing costume in the shape of their product box. Joan Crawford's very good -- though very Joan Crawford. She hits every Joan note with alacrity and intensity and camera-intoxicating flair. There's little depth to her Mildred Pierce, and you really get no sense of what Mildred Dunnock's character in The Corn Is Green might have idealized as "mother love." But there is a ferocity that serves the character well. Watching the fabulous veneer that is Joan, though, I found that I wanted a better sense of Mildred's trashy background -- her Erin Brockovichness if you will. The character seems, essentially, to be both a flirt and a frump -- men see her as a profoundly sexy creature; Veda sees her as a wornout frump; Ida sees her as a fellow traveler...but, in this movie, she's mostly a JoanCrawford concoction. I do think her work here is great movie star acting -- she's compelling, entrancing, fascinating...but she's never particularly the character. The guys are all fine -- each mildly skeevy in his own particular way, though none are quite as menacing/dangerous as they might be. Eve Arden is a welcome presence as Mildred's best friend and business associate, Ida. Would that the script had permitted her more than a wisecrack. There's a weariness and a devotion to Mildred that I really like. Ann Blyth is a bit one-note as the awful Veda -- she's fun to watch and her giant square-ish head and somewhat flat face is perfect for this kind of cinematography. Plus she's tee-tiny. She's perfect as Joan's daughter -- they both have the same giant head and tee-tiny body so they sorta look like they could be related. But Blyth's performance lacks something -- an internal integrity, I guess, as a rotten brat. I never get a sense of what drives Veda, and as such I never truly buy into the potential of her danger. Granted, Veda's fundamentally shallow but I would have valued some depth to her vicious selfishness. (Though I must say, I would LOVE to see the sequel that follows Veda to prison -- some queer should really develop that spin-off, Veda's Turn or La Veda Loca or something.) So, even though I thought this film was lacking in several key emotional areas -- it's incredible clarity of style and craftsmanship more than made up for it. A truly great film that deserves a better dvd treatment.