Mil­dred Pierce (1945)

Though direc­tor Michael Cur­tiz will be for­ev­er be known as The Dude Who Made Casablan­ca, this knot­ty, invig­o­rat­ing­ly bleak women’s pic­ture-noir hybrid from 1945, adapt­ed from a nov­el by the great crime writer James M Cain, remains his mas­ter­piece. Osten­si­bly a clas­si­cal mur­der mys­tery, with the vic­tim receiv­ing four life-end­ing car­tridges to the chest in the open­ing scene, the film switch­es back as sui­ci­dal sin­gle moth­er Mil­dred Pierce (Joan Craw­ford) offloads her earth­ly guilt into the friend­ly ear of a police detective.

Despite the film’s rig­or­ous­ly engi­neered sto­ry mechan­ics, it’s packed with shock­ing swerves and sur­pris­es – to call them ​“twists” would belie their sen­si­tiv­i­ty and their believ­abil­i­ty. It’s a tight genre film that man­ages to account for the rocky, unnav­i­ga­ble ter­rain of real life. Pierce lives to serve her daugh­ters, even though high­ly-strung strum­pet Veda (Ann Blythe) is nau­se­at­ed by her mother’s stiff work­ing class resolve.

Though pri­mar­i­ly inter­est­ed in this com­bustible moth­er-daugh­ter dynam­ic, Cur­tiz also exam­ines how jobs deter­mine and define social sta­tus. He asks whether it’s pos­si­ble, aside from amass­ing mate­r­i­al wealth, for a per­son to ever tru­ly tran­scend their class. As var­i­ous suit­ors and das­tard­ly bound­ers enter the fray, seek­ing affec­tion, or maybe just some play mon­ey, Mil­dred has to con­stant­ly keep rethink­ing her strat­e­gy to win Veda’s respect.

The film might also be con­sid­ered an ear­ly admon­ish­ment of cap­i­tal­ism, with char­ac­ters quick to dis­solve a fast friend­ship with the promise of a few easy bucks. Craw­ford plays it head­strong and seri­ous, with min­i­mal sass. Blyth excels as the dev­il incar­nate, even if the lev­els of acri­mo­ny are at times a lit­tle hard to palate.