325 - Mildred Pierce, United States, 1945. Dir. Michael Curtiz.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

325 - Mildred Pierce, United States, 1945.  Dir. Michael Curtiz.

The gun goes off six times.  Monte Beragon falls to his death.  He looks at his wife Mildred and calls her name.  "Mildred!"  She flees the scene.

She drives to the Santa Monica pier.  Walks out over the water.  Prepares to jump.  A police officer stops her.

She wanders to a bar.  She runs into Wally Fay.  A man who has chased her for years.  From before, during, and after her first husband and before and during her second husband.  And now after.  He chases her again.

Back to the house.

He thinks maybe this time she will say Yes to him.  He has never given up.  He has always tried.

She goes into a room and locks the door.  The room with the stiff.  The room with her dead husband.

She is still upset.  She leaves the house.  The house by the ocean.  She walks up the beach.

He wonders what she is doing in there.  Calls out to her.  Tries different doors.  Finally breaks in.  He finds the body.  What is going on?

He leaves the house.  The house by the ocean.  He walks up the beach.

Just in time for the police to catch him.

They bring him in.

They bring her in.

They bring in her first husband.

Wally is set up for the murder, but the police are too smart.  They pin it on Bert Pierce.

What?

Mildred Pierce Beragon and Wally Fay were at the scene of the crime.  Wally was caught fleeing the scene.  The police pick him up.  They do not suspect her.  They clear him.  They pin it on Bert?

Smart police.

Mildred defends Bert.  He could not have done it.  He is too gentle a man.  She could let herself off, but she chooses not to.  She refuses to let him go down.  Yes, he is her ex-husband but she must realize she still loves him.  She does realize that she was wrong to leave him.  And she wants them to understand.  Is she really going to confess?

Mildred tells her story.

She was married to Bert and raising two daughters.  He was out of work and she nagged him incessantly.  She baked pies to make ends meet.  He spent time with another woman.  She spent time with Wally.  They quarreled.  She threatened him.  She drove him away.  He left.

Mildred spoils her daughters.

Veda, the older one, takes to it.  She demands the very best.  She becomes a diva.

Kay, the younger one, does not.  She is a tomboy.  She is practical.  She is happy with what she has.

Now Mildred is a single mother.  In 1945.  She has to find a way to make money.  Everywhere she applies turns her down.  She does not have experience.

Finally, she talks an overwhelmed restaurant manager into bringing her aboard.  She is hard-working.  She is creative.  She understands the restaurant business.  She believes one can make money at it if one manages it the right way.

She gets her chance.

Monte Beragon is from Pasadena.  He has money.  He helps her get started.  She makes a go of it.  She is successful.

Her daughter Veda has a voracious appetite and intends to spend her mother's money.

Mildred has a weakness for her daughter and keeps giving her money to try to please her.

Perhaps she serves good meals at her restaurant, but not in this area of her life.  This is a recipe for disaster.

And what might turn into a dish best served cold.

Mildred Pierce begins as a gritty, tension-packed film noir.  With stunning high key lighting and dark shadows.

Then it turns into a woman's picture.  A melodrama.  A drama about drama.

With standard lighting and even angles and medium contrast and shallow focus and no shadows.

And stories of human relationships.  Personal finance.  Economics.  Comic relief.  And family problems.

Then something happens.

It returns to film noir.  To low angles and high contrast and deep focus and dark shadows.

And obsession.

And lies.

And betrayal.

And murder.

And something . . .

Shocking.

Michael Curtiz is still riding high from a little picture he made--you may have heard of it--called Casablanca (1942).  And the Academy Award he won for Best Director.  And the two others it won for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.  And the other five nominations it received.

That coming right after Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and its three wins and eight nominations, including his nomination for Best Director.

And his thirty years of working in motion pictures as a director before making Casablanca.

He made five feature films since Casablanca before this one, and he will go on for two more decades, but he is still riding high.

Michael Curtiz may not be a name as well known as some.  Such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, or George Cukor.  But he was as prolific or more so as they.

You can go online right now and purchase on Blu-Ray his 1915 silent feature The Undesirable as well as his 1961 John Wayne feature The Comancheros, made forty-six years apart.  And so many in between.  From Jimmy Cagney gangster pictures to Humphrey Bogart action thrillers to Errol Flynn swashbucklers to musicals to biographies to literary adaptations to Westerns to sports pictures to war films to Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954) to a remake of The Jazz Singer with Danny Thomas in the Al Jolson role to, yes, Elvis Presley in King Creole (1958).

Michael Curtiz did something well.  He worked.

And he left a legacy of many great classics and others that will be rediscovered one day as classics.

For this picture he works with cinematographer Ernest Haller, the cinematographer of Gone With the Wind (1939), a man nominated for seven Academy Awards and winner for Gone With the Wind.

Together they produce stunning visuals, especially in the bookends of the film, in the film noir sections, with beautiful, intense, lighting and shadows.

The film is based on the novel by James M. Cain.  A writer worth noting.  He gave us both The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934, filmed in 1939, 1943, 1946, 1981, 1998, 2004) and Double Indemnity (1936, filmed in 1944).

That alone should make you take notice.

The two prototypical film noir movies about a couple having an affair and conspiring to kill her husband were based on novels (or a novel and a novella) written by the same man.  And here is a film based on one of his novels where it appears a woman is killing her husband not for another man but for . . .

You will need to see the movie to understand what for.

And to allow the movie to give you what for.

Because it will if you let it.

There are different kinds of love.

And then there are things that might seem like love to the person doing it but are really the crossing of boundaries into indulgence and obsession.

Let us just say that Mildred Pierce seems like a really good woman in many ways.

But she has crossed a boundary in at least one area of her life.

And she will pay the price for it.

And so will her family.

There will be a resolution.

And catharsis.

But not until the price is paid.

And someone has to pay it.