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Summary: True classic!
Review: I've seen many movies of Joan Crawford, but I think that this movie gives a true glimpse of her character (not at all portrayed in "Mommie Dearest"). This movie shows Joan as a caring loving woman to her husband and children, a mother who will go to any length to have a better life for her and her family, who seems to show true emotion and tears when her little daughter dies, to win her daughter Veda's love -- even to go as far enough to protect her when Veda does murder! Realistically, if I acted that way, my mother would have made true those words, "Get out before I kill you." LOL It's a classic that's not to be missed. Strike up the fireplace, put your feet up on the couch, get your hanky ready and enjoy this classic.
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Summary: Veda steals the show
Review: Ann Blyth who plays Veda, in this movie based losely on the novel, steals the show with an outstanding performance and makes the movie work. I don't think the dynamics between her character and Joan Crawford (who plays her mother Mildred Pierce) would have worked as well with a different actress!The sparks and tension portrayed in such a sublime fashion are what made this a great movie!
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Summary: Timeless!
Review: The perennial Joan Crawford delivers an exquisite portrait of an unconditionally devoted mother in this very riveting melodrama. She plays a simple mother that strives to provide the world and its wonders on a gold platter to her daughter, Veda, who turns out spoiled and quite evil. Of course, a Joan's movie won't be complete without plenty of melodrama and a catty character (only this time it isn't Joan's), both with which this film is rife. Sometimes the dynamics between the mother and the daughter are inconsistent and very illogical. Nevertheless, this is truly a great classic worthy of your attention.
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Summary: Christmas Eve with Joan & Mildred
Review: Watching Mildred Pierce became (somehow) a Christmas Eve tradition for me a few years ago. A classic battle-of-wills story, you can't help cheering for Mildred when she tells her scheming, selfish daughter "Get out before I kill you!" (the little tramp comes back though). Great fun and melodrama.
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Summary: On my list of the 100 best of all time
Review: This well-paced, exceptionally acted, taut, moving drama, casted a line into my living room and pulled me in, never to release me until the last frame. Everything of human triumph and tragedy, the essence of the life experience, comes out here, very believably. Joan Crawford was a bit before my time, but I will never forget her now. America's artistic tapestry is the richer for having her acting woven into it. Watch this movie some evening when you damned well deserve the best the silver screen has to offer (and when distractions will be minimal.)
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Summary: Joan, the Alpha and Omega
Review: Put simply, if you're one of the two-and-a-half people left on the planet who hasn't seen Mildred Pierce yet, do yourself an enormous favour and get it immediately. Joan Crawford is nothing short of remarkable, and, for once, the director and producers have done the smart thing and extracted an understated and beautifully-shot performance from La Crawford. The supporting cast, in particular Eve Arden, are a treat, and Max Stein's score is, by now, legendary. Also, Wonderful Wonderful Warner Bros. have given Joan fans everywhere a wonderful gift with the B-Side of this DVD; there's almost a 90-minute documentary on Joan which is one of the best movie-star documentaries ever made. It explores all aspects of Joan's life, from the heady flapper years to the alleged child-abuse to the lonely finale of the life of the Absolute and Unquestionable Queen of Hollywood's Golden Age. Get this now.
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Summary: Buy it for Mother's Day!
Review: If ever there was an unselfish mother willing to take it on the chin for an ungrateful child, it was MILDRED PIERCE. While the movie version is greatly sanitized from the racy Cain novel, it's still a classic and Crawford leads a stellar cast. Sure, it can get a bit melodramatic at times, but you can't help but be thoroughly engrossed and Crawford delivers many dead-on moments of real Oscar caliber acting. How ironic that her off-screen mothering was so lacking!
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Summary: Mildred as Gatsby
Review: Joan Crawford had been making successful movies since the silent era. Her early career was full of singing and dancing, rarely showing the edginess that came to mark her later films. Before she was forced to leave MGM, most often she played roles that demonstrated a lighter touch. After signing with Warners, the Joan Crawford that most Americans came to know her by became evident. With MILDRED PIERCE, she shows the quintessential gravitas that later generations came to revere. By 1945, Crawford's career was seen, mistakenly as it turned out, to be in eclipse. Director Michael Curtiz saw in her the actress who could radiate the same ruthless business sense that marked her business life but was paradoxically absent from that of her personal life. Just as Jay Gatsby came to symbolize the hollowness of the Jazz Age, so did Mildred do for the new spirit of American woman who had to struggle alone to build a life while their husbands were busy fighting overseas. Oddly enough, the role of Mildred was first offered to Bette Davis, who unwisely turned it down. Director Curtiz's instincts about Crawford were squarely on the mark as she went on to win an Oscar for Best Actress, beating out Ingrid Bergman, Greer Garson, and Gene Tierney. The toughness of the Mildred Pierce from the novel by James Cain is evident in nearly every scene except when Crawford chooses to drop the mask of continuous self-sacrifice to reveal a woman who has been buffeted by one husband who fails to see her essential goodness, a second husband who sees her only as a meal ticket, and a daughter whose nastiness was rivalled only by Bette Davis as slutty Mildren Rogers from OF HUMAN BONDAGE. Crawford is Mildred Pierce,a tough-minded woman, abandoned by her husband (Bruce Bennet) to care for her two young daughters. The younger of the two dies of pneumonia, forcing Mildred to find work as a waitress. At this job, she starts at the very bottom of the restaurant totem pole. The hours are long, her feet are killing her, and the tips are lousy. But little by little, her life starts to fall into all the right places. Eve Arden is Ida, the wisecracking manager of the restaurant who first hires her then goes on to steal the show with the acid witticisms that have come to mark her career. What happens to Mildred is the downside of the American Dream that dictates that hard work, gumption, and feistiness lead to financial success. Mildred quickly learns the ropes of How to Make a Buck. She finds her success but at the cost of gaining an unscrupulous husband (Zachary Scott) while losing her remaining daughter Veda (Ann Blythe), whose ingratitude and moral sleaziness are immortalized in her parting lines to Mildred: 'I hate the smell of grease in your kitchen and on you.' With the non-stop complaints of the harridan-like Veda, she succeeds in coming across as the fun-loving flapper of a previous generation who finds out to her dismay that when the partying is over, she is expected to clean up her own mess. Veda and Mildred's new husband are the perfect pair: flashy on the outside, empty on the inside, and determined to climb the ladder of success on the other's respective back. The joy of watching MILDRED PIERCE is not just from seeing how well Crawford claws her way to success while trying all the while to have the personal life that her business life seems bent on withholding. It also resides in the way the supporting cast bounces off each other at just the right pitch and the right moment. One of the film's central ironies is that the man who abandons her at the film's start (Bennet) stands revealed as the only one of Mildred's inner circle who remains loyal by the closing credits. Mildred, like Gatsby, learns a brutal truth about that tough climb up the ladder: wealth earned at the cost of losing one's family is a bleakly inadequate substitute for that loss. Gatsby never had a chance to learn this. Mildred did.
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Summary: Great movie and a great DVD.
Review: Save for the high camp of "Straight Jacket" and "Trog", I don't much care for Joan Crawford movies. But "Mildred Pierce" is a true classic in every sense of the word: great story, great acting, wonderful characters, and getting to see Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth trade slaps. Joan is truly at her best here and, with director Michael Curtiz putting a muzzle on her, keeps her overacting to a minimum. With this DVD, though, you also get a first-class documentary about Joan Crawford's wacky rise to stardom. Great stuff!
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Summary: Warner Brothers DVD Poor Production Quality
Review: My review is not for the movie but for Warner Brothers and the series of DVDs they have been issuing. I have Big Sleep, Kiss Me Kate, Mildred Pierce, Annie Get Your Gun. The picture quality on all is good, BUT they ALL have the picture cut off at both sides, even on the letterbox version of Kiss Me Kate. Is someone at Warner Bros. asleep at the wheel? It isn't hard to figure out as the opening credits roll and you see a credit for "...nic Design" and then the last part of the person's name chopped off. And I don't think the direction on Kiss Me Kate was so bad that the leading dancers are constantly chopped in half at either end of a scene. It is unfortunate that there are no other options, if you like these movies there are no other versions available. But someone at Warner's should Pay Attention!
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