6.6 DISCUSSION: Mildred Pierce

 6.6 DISCUSSION: Mildred Pierce

                                
                                         Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)

To continue our discussion on the complexities and difficulties in representation of women in film noir please choose at least one topic below to expand on:

1. Combustible mother-daughter dynamic

2. Mildred Pierce as a tight genre film that manages to account for the rocky, unnavigable terrain of real life

3. Early admonishment of capitalism is it possible, aside from amassing material wealth, for a person to ever truly transcend their class?

4. Rigorously engineered story mechanics

5. Larger issues/consequences of race, gender and class in the film

6. The clashing of melodrama and noir

7. Womanhood and motherhood as depicted in Mildred Pierce

Please choose one scene from Mildred Pierce and embed a screenshot or clip into your post. 

Describe how one or more of the formal elements of the shot including: lighting, composition, cinematography, placement of characters and objects in the frame, decor, set design, and camera angles 

Communicate something unique that story, plot, and dialogue alone do not. I do not expect your analysis to reflect a prior study of film, many of you are taking your first film class, but our goal is to begin looking at how formal design reflects unique historical periods and allows us to see film in a new way.

My Post on 3-14-22

Topic chosen: combustible mother-daughter dynamic for discussion

[cinematography notes: Mildred is framed in the window pane in a close up. My understanding of close-up being shoulders up. The key lighting is coming from the right with lower fill light on the left to make it look like later afternoon or early evening. I believe there is a glamour filter on her face or soft lighting to make her face smooth.]

Here’s a picture of Mildred with a tear of joy streaming out of her eye when the love of her life, Veda is finally coming home to her. She has married a man she didn’t love to get a place in society as her daughter had requested. She has been miserable without her daughter and this is the best gift her ex-husband could have brought her.

Why did Veda leave in the first place? Because she swindled $10,000 from a wealthy boy’s family with a fake pregnancy and told her mother that “with this money I can get away from every rotten stinking thing that makes me think of this place or you”.

Although she went into much more detail: “With this money, I can get away from you… from you and your chickens, pies and kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack and its cheap furniture, and this town and its dollar days and Its women that wear uniforms. Its men that wear overalls”.

There was more repartee, with team Mildred finally saying, “Veda, I think I’m really seeing you for the first time and your cheap and horrible”.

Followed by the scene finale of Mildred runs up the stairs after Veda and rips up her $10,000 check. Veda then slaps her mother to the ground.

[cinematography notes: This is a wide shot with depth, all the planes are in focus. The banister offers nice artistic framing for the scene. The actress faces are well lit, maybe a high key light in front of the camera to get the drama in their faces, with a little shadow off of Veda standing above on the bottom of Joan's face.] 

Mildred rises up with the cold Joan Crawford eyes saying, “Veda – get out! Get your things out your things out of this house right now before I throw them into the street and you with them. Get out before I kill you”.

[Cinematography notes: A medium two shot. High key lighting a little to the left of the actresses to give the hair shadows on the column behind Joan. Great use of costume for the scene to have them in deep black to get the great contrast to see especially Joan's great expressions and scene.]

I wish the mother-daughter dynamics had ended there. I’m sure if I had seen the film at the Castro, that final line, “I’ll Kill You”, would have gotten a standing ovation. However, we’re only midway through the picture, and as I’ve mentioned, Veda requires her mom to jump through the huge hoop of marrying a man so they can both be ‘in society’.

The motivation always puzzled me. Mildred gave up her marriage and dedicated her life to making money to ‘keep’ her daughter. There are good, hard-working mothers in the world, but the motivation still didn’t seem to make sense.

The short Criterion Collection video of critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito was quite shocking but it had an interesting theory. It revolves around the difference between the character of Mildred Pierce in the book vs the film. In the book it claims that Mildred has an almost erotic attraction to her daughter. That there are scenes in the book where they are in bed together and Mildred comments on Veda’s pleasant smell. They also discuss the depth of hurt of the rejection from Veda as Mildred getting spurned by a lover. That the whole relationship is like an unrequited passion.

Well, that is dark, and very un-Hays code, very un-Hollywoodesque, but it seems that the spirit of that unrequited passion for her daughter is passed to the screenplay as we see in the first shot with Mildred and the huge tear in her eye.

The reading "Mildred Pierce novel to Film," also refers to the differences between James Cain’s 1941 novel, Mildred Pierce and the 1945 film version. “In the novel this relationship goes a step or two beyond a mother’s love and obsession”. In the book, when Veda moves back into the house, Mildred even ceases sleeping with her husband. “All of these “feelings” are depicted clearly in the film version but not to the extent they are in the novel.”

This is an a-typical mother-daughter dynamic. Think if the role of Mildred had been a man. It would seem much more incestuous-toned film. However, I don't think incest occurred, just the emotional unrequited lover feelings from Mildred. The relationship would seem very wrong to let your wife leave the house because you needed to buy a dress for your daughter that the two of you could not afford. 

I feel that Veda somewhat knows the power that she has in the relationship, thus almost spells out to her mother that she should marry Monte Beragon to get her to come back home. I think also that Veda is emotionally disturbed because she senses that something is not quite right with her mother's affection towards her and she is retaliating and acting out. She can't seem to do anything to get her to back off no matter how horrible she behaves. She finally comes up with a way to leave the house and it doesn't work, but she's just as happy being a cabana singer because she is free. 

Comments from Students on my post

Erin: 

Ida, nice screen shots. "Get out before I kill you!" — what a great line. Usually it's Joan who slaps people in her films.

Giuseppe:

Hello Ida,

I really like your post and I liked how well you covered Mildred and Veda’s mother daughter dynamic. It was really sad to see how much Mildred was abused by Veda and how it was recurring until the end of the film. I would have liked to see Mildred break free of Veda but it never happened. I guess that just shows how much she sacrificed for Veda and how much she cared for her.

Bertha:

I'm glad you pointed out the difference between the film and the novel in regards to their mother daughter relationship.  I was really confused in class when we started talking about incestuous relationships because I did not see that in the film.  All I saw in the film was a mother sacrificing her own happiness to give her children the best.  Mildred's motivation made sense to me.  Her two daughters are everything to her and they come first no matter what.  After Bert left I can only imagine how much anxiety or constant worry she had developed to provide for herself and her kids.  I feel that Mildred feared losing her family and when her youngest daughter died she probably felt some type of regret, self blame, and unhealthy thoughts and emotions that would cause her to do anything for the only daughter she has left.   

My reply to Bertha: 

Hi Bertha, 

I think what I said was a little confusing. I don't think they had an incestuous relationship. I think it had tones of that in terms of how Meredith felt about her daughter almost as a "spurned lover" they say in they say in the readings. Her love is that intense, I think it chokes Veda in my opinion. 

I also think because of her obsession with Veda, she overlooked that cough that her younger daughter had for quite some time. 

Thanks for your comments.

My replies to students:

Hello Erin, 

I always enjoy your notes on cinematography, then I remember I better run back and add them to mine. 

Under the section "The Mystery" also I enjoy your headings. I'd say that Monte is being shot in a Medium long shot due to the fact that the camera is almost down to his knees from the definition I know, however, the camera proxemics look close to the character. That's my mystery. 

I enjoyed your description of a horizontal medium shot which I have not heard before, but yes, that is what it is. "Velvety blacks" is a lovely description, I can see how you are definitely a writer. 

Thanks, 

Ida

Erin's reply:

I force myself to examine the Shots, otherwise I bog down in Narrative. I learn so much from scrutinizing a sequence. A simple thing like the two of them dressed in black (your screenshot) has an emotional impact on the viewer. cheers!

Hello Joan,

So many other terrible things happened at the hand of Veda, that I had forgotten of that terrible time she found her mother's waitress outfit and dressed up the maid with her uniform to mock her. If that wasn't the incident of the first slap, it should've. 

You're point about the Hays code enforcing punishment for sins was a good one. It reminded me of one of the readings that mentioned that Mildred had gone off a day with Monte and come home late. She was intentionally punished in the script with coming home and having her child be sick as she wasn't there. Then they have her die. It noted that she was a separated woman and that was not appropriate behavior for the times no matter how bad the man had been.