I wrote down my impressions ten years ago:
Saw it for the third time and I could keep watching it forever. It is one of the greatest ever made. Visually gorgeous. The dialogue is smart, real. Joan Crawford is priceless. Everything works. This could have been a soap opera, but it is far from it. It is touching, amusing and always interesting. It never sags or lags. The only flaw is the rather pointless death of one of the daughters. The movie has some didactic elements (don't spoil your children), but it is far from being just a sermon. There are no villains. The writer sees everyone as a human being. These are real people, complex, contradictory. Yet the complexity isn't overdone. The movie remains light and never sinks into bathos. I don't know what it is about Joan Crawford that thrills me so much. She is a damn good actress. She knows just the right balance between acting a character and being one. Gone are the days of stylish acting like hers.
My views are not set in concrete. I can't believe I liked Love Story (1970) only a few years ago! In retrospect it seems shockingly classist, with the girl having to conveniently shuffle off her mortal coil to prevent inter-class miscegenation. Hollywood is reactionary when it comes to racial and class miscegenation (and many other things), and one must watch out for these cryptic messages that masquerade as tragedy. Is Mildred Pierce a tragedy, because she is a working woman? Is the message, that working women are up to no good?
Saw it for the third time and I could keep watching it forever. It is one of the greatest ever made. Visually gorgeous. The dialogue is smart, real. Joan Crawford is priceless. Everything works. This could have been a soap opera, but it is far from it. It is touching, amusing and always interesting. It never sags or lags. The only flaw is the rather pointless death of one of the daughters. The movie has some didactic elements (don't spoil your children), but it is far from being just a sermon. There are no villains. The writer sees everyone as a human being. These are real people, complex, contradictory. Yet the complexity isn't overdone. The movie remains light and never sinks into bathos. I don't know what it is about Joan Crawford that thrills me so much. She is a damn good actress. She knows just the right balance between acting a character and being one. Gone are the days of stylish acting like hers.
My views are not set in concrete. I can't believe I liked Love Story (1970) only a few years ago! In retrospect it seems shockingly classist, with the girl having to conveniently shuffle off her mortal coil to prevent inter-class miscegenation. Hollywood is reactionary when it comes to racial and class miscegenation (and many other things), and one must watch out for these cryptic messages that masquerade as tragedy. Is Mildred Pierce a tragedy, because she is a working woman? Is the message, that working women are up to no good?