Mildred Pierce · reception & legacy
1945 · Michael Curtiz
How Mildred Pierce has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A hit in 1945 that resurrected Joan Crawford's career after MGM dropped her, it was later adopted by feminist film scholars in the '70s and '80s as the key case study in what happens when the 'woman's picture' collides with film noir — and it's now firmly canon on both counts.
What's debated
Film fans still argue over what it even is — noir or melodrama? — while everyone agrees on one thing: Veda is one of the most gloriously hateable characters ever put on screen.
Its footprint
Eve Arden's line 'Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea — they eat their young' gets endlessly quoted, Sonic Youth named a song 'Mildred Pierce' on Goo, and Todd Haynes re-adapted the Cain novel as a 2011 HBO miniseries with Kate Winslet.
Where it stands
The gateway Joan Crawford film and a cornerstone of both the noir and melodrama canons — the 'you must have seen this' entry point for 1940s women's pictures.