MILDRED PIERCE

Details

• Release Year: 1945
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
• Plot: Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. It's iconic performance by Joan Crawford as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford's career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by the bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent's tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain's rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.
• Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe, William Alcorn, Betty Alexander, Ramsay Ames, George Anderson, Robert Arthur, Lynn Baggett, Leah Baird, Dorothy Barrett, Barbara Brown, Elyse Brown, Claire Carleton, Doria Caron, Wheaton Chambers, John Christian, Wallis Clark, Chester Clute, John Compton, Joyce Compton, Clancy Cooper, David Cota, Tom Dillon, Robert Evans, James Flavin, Bess Flowers, Don Grant, Angela Greene, Dorothy Hack, Arthur Stuart Hull, Charles Jordan, Marjorie Kane, Fred Kelsey, Richard Kipling, Manart Kippen, Perk Lazelle, Marion Lessing, Jimmy Lono, Robert Loraine, Jean Lorraine, Butterfly McQueen, George Meader, Mary Ellen Meyran, Harold Miller, Jack Mower, Frank O'Connor, Jack O'Connor, Garry Owen, Paul Panzer, Helen Pender, Larry Rio, William Ruhl, Jeffrey Sayre, Mary Servoss, John Sheridan, George Tobias, Charles Trowbridge, Johnny Walsh, Joan Wardley, Joan Winfield, Michael Curtiz, Ranald MacDougall, James M. Cain, William Faulkner, Margaret Gruen, Albert Maltz, Louise Randall Pierson, Catherine Turney, Margaret Buell Wilder, Thames Williamson
• Director: Michael Curtiz
• Runtime: 1:51
• Company: The Criterion Collection, Warner Bros Pictures, Turner Entertainment Company, Warner Home Entertainment
• Media Format: Movie