Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce (1945) is Michael Curtiz's noir melodrama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A woman claws her way out of poverty for a daughter who repays her with contempt. It opens on a gunshot, then circles back.

After her marriage to Bert falls apart, Mildred (Joan Crawford) takes a waitressing job and builds a restaurant chain from nothing. The money buys her a new husband, smooth aristocrat Monty Beragon, who burns through her savings and chases other women behind her back. Worse is her own daughter. Veda (Ann Blyth) is ashamed of where she came from and bleeds her mother dry, scene after scene, with a cruelty that still lands hard.

Curtiz wraps a maternal weepie in hard noir lighting, all staircases, shadows and a body on the floor. The script comes from James M. Cain, the same writer behind Double Indemnity, so the sentiment always has a knife in it. Crawford won the Best Actress Oscar here and resurrected a stalled career in one shot. If you want classic Hollywood where devotion curdles into a trap, this is essential. Stream Mildred Pierce (1945) online on iFILM.