Mildred Pierce

A man is shot at a beach house. In the interrogation room Mildred Pierce's account takes us back: a woman who leaves her husband, waits tables, builds a restaurant chain, and spends all of it trying to earn her daughter Veda's approval. Veda despises everything her mother earns. Michael Curtiz directed, from James M. Cain's 1941 novel. The murder plot is not in the book; the censorship code of the time required wrongdoers to be punished, so the producers added the thread. In the novel Monte survives and Veda stays out of jail. Joan Crawford went after the part deliberately. She had left MGM for Warner Bros.; Curtiz first wanted Barbara Stanwyck, who declined, and he doubted Crawford until he saw her screen test. There was friction on set at first, and they later worked together again on Flamingo Road. The role won Crawford an Oscar. On a 1.4 million dollar budget it took 5.6 million. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 88 percent, with critics describing it as noir and social drama blended to soapily intoxicating effect. It entered the National Film Registry in 1996. Who it is for: viewers who want noir, mother-and-daughter warfare and Crawford at her peak. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the murder mystery to be the centre. That thread is a frame bolted on afterwards, and the film's real subject is elsewhere.