Mildred Pierce

About a year or so ago, there was an interview in a stuffy, but still good, film magazine with Todd Haynes, one of my favorite directors.  After discussing Superstar, Poison, Dottie Gets Spanked, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, Haynes' let on to what his next project might be.  He sed he had just seen (or re-seen) Berlin Alexanderplatz and was v taken with it.  Haynes expressed a desire to work in television, busting the 120 minute barrier.

Fast forward aboot six months later:  I am fooling around on imdb.com and, lo and behold, there listed is Haynes' new project, a cable TV mini-series for HBO, starring one of my all-time favorite actresses, Kate Winslett.  It is a remake of Mildred Pierce, the old camp chestnut, starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott (gosh, he is good in this), Jack Carson (he is great, too), and, Heck! We gotta have a wisecracking second fiddle to Joan, right? So, the (early career) Ginger Rogers/Joan Blondell/Aline MacMahon part went to the fabulous Eve Arden.  Kate Winslett will play the Crawford role.  Evan Rachel Wood will be doing Ann Blyth's part and Guy Pierce will be Zachary Scott.  I was v excited to learn this.  If anyone can do a remake of Mildred Pierce it is Haynes.  And it really is the type of story that deserves five hours.

Anyhoo, HBO, promoting their new series, Boardwalk Empire, (a show I could care less aboot, notwithstanding Aleksa Palladino being in it) finally showed the trailer.  Here is the trailer.  So, excited as I was, I decided I had to watch the original on Monday, two days ago.  Renee has ne'er seen it, & I had not seen it start to finish in years.  My strongest memory of Mildred Pierce was seeing it with my Mum at a cool rep movie house in Dallas when I was a kid.

So, for $2.99, I purchased it OnDemand.

Michael Curtiz, the Hungarian Hollywood Auteur, who actors (stars) sed could never be understood on the set, who is always criticized for his non-flashy/storytelling camera style, and the director of these films:  The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Wolf, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Passage to Marseilles, Night and Day, The Will Rogers Story, White Christmas, We're No Angels, King Creole, and of course, arguably the greatest American film-entertainment of all-time, Casablanca, delivered Mildred Pierce to Warner Brothers in 1945.  (And I bet you dollars to doughnuts it was on-time and under budget.)

Before we watched it Renee asked me what type of film it was.  I told her it was a combination of genres.  Mildred Pierce is a melodrama, a murder mystery, a "woman's picture", a film noir, a weepie, and a Camp Classic that plays v well at the Castro.  Then we talked about gays, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, etc, ...

Mildred Pierce is much much better than I remembered it.  It is based on a James M. Cain novel and his seediness and cynicism seep through the screen, coating the audience in ick.  Only two of the main characters are even remotely likeable (though Bert does redeem himself by the end):  Crawford's Mildred and her daughter Kay.  (Kay dies in the third reel, natch.)  Mildred does a have a fatal flaw, though.  Despite her toughness, smarts, and olympian-sized work-ethic she cannot seem to pick the right man.  Of course you could argue, she could do v well without a man at all.  Mildred's life is dedicated to her oldest daughter, and she marries for a second time just to bring her estranged daughter back in to her life.

There are three available marriage candidates for Mildred in the film.  She marries two of them.  The first ends in divorce, he is broke & cheating on her and the second marriage ends v badly, indeed.  I will leave it at that.  But before you think that the third candidate, Jack Carson, a real-estate agent, club impresario (though his clubs are dives that serve cheap liquor as a matter of course), and business partner in Mildred's restaurant chain, is the one 'who got away', amplifying her tragedy, consider this: He's disgusting, too.  To wit, On what should be one of the happiest days of her life, the opening night of her restaurant, Zachary Scott has brought Mildred some orchids.  Carson is instructed to deliver them to a v busy Mildred.  Carson throws them in the trash.  Carson and Blyth (daughter Veda) then work a scheme to blackmail Veda's rich rich boyfriend for ten grand.  Veda makes up a pregnancy that does not exist.  When Mildred finally gets all the facts, she tears up Veda's check and chucks Veda out of the house.  Mildred goes to Mexico for a long vacation but finds out upon her return (thanks to Bert) that Carson has hired Veda to be a 'singer' at one of his dives.  Finally, Carson sells his hefty portion of the business at a point when Mildred is over-extended financially, trying to keep Veda happy and close at hand, meaning she will lose the business and have to start all over.

That is the amazing thing that stung me about this film.  Basically it is a Jerry Springer episode on film.  But it was made in Hollywood! So all these reptilian slimeballs are lit to look like movie stars.  They do look like movie stars.  They are movie stars, with gowns by Irene and fantastic forties suits with the wide ties.  DP, Ernest Haller does some phenomenal work, pretty much laying the patent for how Crawford would be shot the rest of her career and achieving a high art type of seediness that you just never saw in noir films.  (Except maybe parts of Double Indemnity.)  The Curtiz version is set in Southern California and I do not know where Haynes' (looks to be a period setting) is set but this subject just screams Oklahoma or Texas to me.  Come on, a name like Veda! That is the most perfect white-trash daughter name, evah! Can you not just picture Homecoming Queen Veda of Midland, Texas or Ada, Oklahoma? 


In terms of just gut-level engagement, or film entertainment, this film is in the top one percentile.  Renee was like an old drag queen, yelling at the TV, to "Throw her down the stairs!" or "Get a job, bitch!"  I love the (prob unintended) irony of glamour laid atop a  white trash melodrama.  I love how everyone is just so awful.  And mean.  And small.


Good stuff.