Mildred Pierce

“Only one thing worried me: that someday Veda would find out I worked in a restaurant,” says Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford), referring to her own selfish, rotten daughter who mocks Mildred for having a job (“You’ve never spoken about your people”) while demanding her mother provide her with all the luxuries she desires. Sixteen-year-old Ann Blyth, who plays the beautiful, icy-veined Veda, comes very close to upstaging Crawford in Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, the two women forming perhaps the most dysfunctional parent-child relationship in all of noir. After being abandoned by her lazy, unfaithful husband Bert (Bruce Bennett), Mildred pulls herself up from her bootstraps to become a wildly successful restaurateur and self-made millionaire, which, by the way, makes her one of classic cinema’s great feminist heroines. After a murder takes place at the start of the film, Mildred recounts to the police inspector (Moroni Olsen) how she succeeded in spite of the unreliable men she met along the way and the daughter she spoiled out of an overabundance of love (“It’s your fault I’m this way!”). Curtiz and cinematographer Haller apply flawless mise en scène to give every shot and every scene an abundance of artistic purpose, containing Mildred’s life in a handful of beautifully designed sets (the mansion, the restaurant, the beach house). Butterfly McQueen and her high-pitched, toddler-like voice are on hand as Mildred’s comical if not cartoonish maid Lottie.