I have seen different films for a myriad various reasons in the past, but 1945’s Mildred Pierce is the first time I have seen a picture because it was the name of a Sonic Youth song.  I still don’t know why the track is called that, even after seeing this picture a second time.  Really, anything that gets somebody to see this superior, noir-tinged melodrama is a good reason.

It opens with Zachary Scott getting shot multiple times in his beach house.  By that, I mean he was in his beachside second home when he receives several injections of hot lead dispensed at lightning speed, and not that “beach house” is a euphonism for some part of the body, no matter how much it would amuse me if that became street lingo.  Just imagine people saying so-and-so was “capped in the beach house”. 

Scott’s final word is “Mildred”, which happens to be the name of his wife, as played by Joan Crawford.  He is actually her second husband, following a disastrous marriage to Bruce Bennett.  Later that night, Crawford, Bennett and associates Jack Carson and Eve Arden all find themselves in a police station as inspector Moroni Olsen tries to piece together what happened.  I like his explanation to Crawford of how the process works: “Being a detective is like making a car.  We just take the pieces and put them together and, eventually, we have a car.”

Actually, Bennett had already confessed, but Olsen knows something is up and so proceeds to have Crawford give him her story.  The feature-length flashback is a common device in noir, but rarely used and even more rarely a necessity.  But it truly is needed to work its way to up an ending it earns, and it is effortless to follow the plot as it is told starting years earlier and leading up to the present.

From what we see of her first marriage, she and Bennett probably could have had a happy and ongoing relationship if he didn’t have such low self-esteem. They have two daughters, played Ann Blyth and Jo Ann Marlowe. Bennett has trouble holding down a job, and resents Crawford for helping to keep the family afloat by selling the endless pies she seems to be producing from her kitchen.

That will come in handy later when, with the help of Jack Carson, she manages to open her own restaurant.  I have always liked Carson, going back to his overenthusiastic police officer and amateur playwright in Arsenic and Old Lace.  Here, he is a wheeler and dealer who is seems to play fair until some later scenes in which he is revealed to be as susceptible to corruption as most other people.  But I’m getting ahead of myself, as he is going out of his way for now because of his unrequited attraction for Crawford.  Her: “Friendship is longer lasting than love.”  Him: “But it isn’t as entertaining.”

Instead, she feels a romantic stirring for Scott, the man from whom Carson made the arrangements for what was once his property.  He is a man of wealthy upbringing brought to a low end because he refuses to curtail the lifestyle to which he is accustomed. 

I find it strange Crawford would fall for such a louche character who describes himself as “I loaf in a highly decorative and likeable manner.”  Then again, the heart is a lonely hunter and the way to man’s heart is through his stomach and, I don’t know, the spleen is probably involved in there somewhere.

And she falls for the guy even after accepting an invitation to this beach house, where she can choose from any number of swimsuits already there in a closet.  He claims these all belong to his sisters, but she sees through that, playfully saying, “Too many sisters.  They all seem to be my size, too.”  Still, she knows to be careful around a wolf, and when he asks her how she likes her drink, she responds, “Harmless.”

Concurrent with all this is her increasing struggle with Blyth, who had class aspirations when we first met her and who becomes a deeply repellent snob by the time Scott enters Crawford’s life.  Get a load of this line from her following the slightest affection from Crawford: “I love you, mother, but let’s not be sticky about it.”  Crawford desperately needed a job after Bennett left and so she takes up waiting tables at Arden’s restaurant.  Knowing Blyth will show contempt for her other doing major labor, Crawford hides the source of their income while buying Blyth things she believes the girl wants, but which are still never good enough.  Arden calls it as she sees it when saying, “I think alligators have the right idea.  They eat their young.”  Even Crawford will eventually be forced to see Blyth as she really is: “You’re cheap and horrible.”

All these characters are on a path that inevitably leads to Scott’s death.  The performances are solid all around, with not a single one ever hitting a bum note.  Some minor characters I especially liked include Butterfly McQueen, who is stuck in a servant role, given the times, but has strong charisma and some great bits of comedy.  She also possesses an amazing voice that made me smile each time she spoke.  An underused actor here is Marlowe, as the younger sister, who is as much a tomboy as her older sister is a prima donna.  I especially like this exchange between Blyth and Marlowe from when we first saw either of them: “Just wait ’til you get interested in boys.”  “I got over that when I was 8.”

I liked the film best when it is at its most noir.  The scenes in the police station are interesting, playing out with nothing on the soundtrack except dialogue, some incidental environmental noises, and a pendulum clock in the background. An eternity seems to pass between each second doled out by that clock with its next tick.

The beach house scenes which roughly bookend the feature are some of the best examples I have seen of the genre’s photography.  It is all chiaroscuro lighting and low angles that capture shafts of light reaching across ceilings.  Any frame from these sequences could be printed and hung on a wall.

Mildred Pierce takes a bit too long to get where it is going, losing some steam along the way.  But it still is a stunning film, full of interesting characters who say intriguing things to each other, sometimes in environments which make the heart of this noir whore flutter.  It also has an unique and unusual spin on the femme fatale with Blyth.  I will probably never figure out why Sonic Youth named a track after this picture, but God bless ‘em for doing that, just the same.

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth

Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray