Mildred Pierce Reviews

Since this movie is a classic and since it was included in the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die' list, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, even though it was indeed pretty good, to be honest, it didn't completely blow me away. First of all, even though Joan Crawford delivered a solid performance and won at the time the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, in my opinion, her character should have been more complex. Indeed, even though Mildred Pierce was first presented as a possible murderer, Crawford slowly removed any evidence that this woman was anything else than perfect and it backfired as it made this woman much lesser interesting then when the movie started. Eventually, the more complex character turned out to be actually Veda Pierce thanks to a really strong performance by Ann Blyth but even this character didn't really work after all. Basically, all what Mildred Pierce did was to give a better life to her children, especially Veda. However, at some point, she managed to become really rich which should have been more than sufficient but Veda kept on being impossible to deal with with no real explanation whatsoever except to provide some conflict to move the story forward. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn't completely work for me, it was still a solid film noir and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.