Rent Mildred Pierce (1945)

Suburban Noir. - Mildred Pierce review by Steve

James Cain's depression era novel is turned into film noir with the addition of a murder. This prompts a flashback about a waitress who builds up a restaurant chain, but loses everything else. Mildred Pierce was the role of Joan Crawford's life. She surely identified with a woman born into poverty who works to gain wealth but alienates her child through dogmatic parenting.

It's a powerful film with strong studio virtues. Much of the dramatic thrust is provided by Max Steiner's orchestral score. The gorgeous high contrast black and white photography gleams like a highway in the rain.  The sassy, hardboiled dialogue is classic Warner Brothers.

There isn't as much of an urban setting as other '40s noirs. It is mostly situated in the LA suburbs, but still makes expressive use of its locations; the beach towns and highways of Southern California. And the lavish Malibu beach house where the murder takes place.  

The big strength is its depiction of psychological frailty: it's an opera of passive-aggression; an epic of bartered love; of sex and greed rendered so frighteningly sordid that they both mean the same thing. The casting is spectacular. Crawford deservedly won the Oscar. Ann Blyth- only 17- is horrifying as Mildred's spoiled, sociopathic daughter.