MILDRED PIERCE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 410, 2 May 1947, Page 24

MILDRED PIERCE

(Warner Bros.) :

}H{OLLYWoop, turning over a few more rocks in its present mood of zealous inquiry into human nastiness, brings to licht one or’ two

choice specimens in Mildred Pierce. The basic motive in all such research is, of course, not scientific enlightenment but merely box-office stimulation. This motive apart, however, I think this grubbing about cannot be condemned unless it is undertaken and exploited solely for its own sake-simply for the pleasure of handling dirt, so to speak. It can, on the other hand, be easily enough justified if in the process there is some revelation of character; that is to say, if the interest lies not so much in the unpleasant things which people do as in what makes them do them. By this test at least Mildred Pierce, a sordid but fascinating story, can justify (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page)

itself-though perhaps not without some difficulty, A study in perverted motherlove, based on‘ the book~by James M. Cain, it presents Joan Crawford in the role which worn her an Academy Award" nearly two years ago (New Zealand still hasn’t caught up with Warner Bros.’ releases). She’s a mother who sacrifices herself and her husband for the sake ef a selfish minx of a daughter; she stops at nothing to give her daughter everything she wants, and the result of all this stupid pampering is that the daughter not merely despises her, but stops at nothing Seither-not even murder. I wouldn’t call Miss Crawford’s a great performance, though it is certainly a competent ‘one---as competent as Mildred Pierce herself; but cold and flat and rather superficial. We see the results of Mildred Pierce’s dominating passion, and they are grim and exciting enough, but we more or less have to accept her own word for it that it is her dominating passion; there is actually little in Miss Crawford’s acting to explain, or even suggest, its existence. With her daughter, an obnoxious type if ever there was one (played with skill by Ann Blyth), there is a difference: in this case the cause as well as the effect is sufficiently obvious. Thé leading men‘ of the. story (Zachary Scott and Jack Carson) are also worthless types, by-products of social and economic attitudes which the Americans, in their movies, make almost no attempt to condemn but none to conceal. The only character in the story who arouses the faintest response of sympathetic interest from the audience is Mildred’s wise-cracking friend and associate in the restaurant business which is created to provide luxuries for the daughter. This is Eve Arden, hardsurfaced but warm-hearted, Mildred Pierce opens well (the body of the murdered man tipping forward into the camera), creates a good atmosphere of mystery and suspense, proceeds to develop its narrative by means of the flash-back, contains camera,angles to please the connoisseur, and manages to hold the interest fairly consistently. It is a much better film than Cain’s The Postman: Always Rings Twice, but a much less successful one than his Double Indemnity.