--- title: "Mildred Pierce" year: 1945 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/mildred-pierce-1945" fi1m_score: 83 critics_score: 77 critics_reviews: 12 published: "2026-09-20T01:26:59.893933+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T01:27:12.962107+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Mildred Pierce (1945) Directed by Michael Curtiz · 1h 51m · MPA NR · Crime, Drama **Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 77 from 12 reviews *In a sentence:* A woman builds a restaurant empire out of pies so her daughter can despise her in better clothes > Michael Curtiz’s melodrama about a mother who bakes her way to money and cannot buy the one thing she wants is as sharp as its reputation. Joan Crawford holds the centre by will alone; the murder wrapped around her is the least of it. ## Synopsis A man is shot in a beach house on the California coast and dies with the name Mildred on his lips. Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) is picked up on a pier that night and taken to Inspector Peterson (Moroni Olsen), who wants to know how a Glendale housewife who baked pies came to own a chain of restaurants. She tells him. Her husband Bert (Bruce Bennett) has lost his job and found Maggie Biederhof (Lee Patrick), and when he leaves she is left with two daughters: Kay (Jo Ann Marlowe), a tomboy, and Veda (Ann Blyth), who wants lessons, a better address and a mother she need not be ashamed of. Mildred takes a waitressing job in secret and learns the trade from Ida Corwin (Eve Arden). ## Review Michael Curtiz’s [*Mildred Pierce*](https://film.one/tv/mildred-pierce) opens with gunshots in a beach house and spends the next 111 minutes explaining how a Glendale housewife who bakes pies came to be walking a pier at night near a dead man. James M. Cain’s novel has no murder in it. Ranald MacDougall’s screenplay and Jerry Wald’s production put one in, wrapped the mother-and-daughter story inside a police interview, and sold a women’s picture as a thriller. That should have been a mess. It is one of the sharpest studio melodramas of its decade. It is as good as its reputation, and most of the reputation belongs to Joan Crawford. Mildred is a woman who has decided to be respectable and will work herself into the ground to prove it. Crawford plays her with her chin up and her eyes wet, and never once asks us to like her. Milo Anderson dresses the change: an apron and a housedress at the start, then a waitress’s uniform, then tailored suits with shoulders you could rest a tray on, and at last a fur she wears without quite believing in it. You can read the bank balance off the clothes. Ernest Haller lights the two halves of the story as two different films. The Glendale kitchen is flat and bright, every surface visible, nobody hiding anything. The beach house, the pier and the police station are the other film: venetian blinds throwing bars across faces, wet boards under a streetlamp, a single desk light in the interview room. David Weisbart cuts between the two with slow dissolves, so the past arrives as something Mildred is admitting rather than something we are shown. Around her the casting is close to faultless. Eve Arden’s Ida runs the restaurant floor with a line for everything and no illusions about anybody, and is the only person who tells Mildred the truth. Jack Carson’s Wally Fay is a property man who never stops selling, damp-handed and always slightly too close. Zachary Scott’s Monte Beragon is a Pasadena idler who has run out of money but not of manners. Bruce Bennett’s Bert is the weak point, decent and dull; that may be the idea, but it leaves a hole where the marriage should be. The film lives or dies on Veda, and Ann Blyth plays her with a lifted chin and a voice already practising for money. At least one reviewer in 1945 found the girl hard to credit. We did not, because the film shows why: every time Veda sneers, Mildred pays for something. The scene that got at us is a small one. Veda finds the waitress uniform, puts it on the maid as a joke, and lets her mother know what she thinks of women who wait tables. We watched Crawford’s face fall and then set, then watched Mildred apologise, and wanted to reach into the screen and stop her. She can face down a bank and she cannot face down her own child. Not all of it holds. Max Steiner’s score tells us what to feel a few seconds before the actors do, and there are string surges under scenes that had already landed. The grafted-on murder plot takes over the last stretch, and the film gets smaller as it gets busier; the interview room, so useful as a frame, becomes a place for explanations. Butterfly McQueen plays the maid, Lottie, and is not credited for it, and the uniform joke is at her expense as much as Mildred’s. That is how the studio worked in 1945. Curtiz had made [*Casablanca*](https://film.one/film/casablanca) three years earlier, and this is the colder, tighter film. The other Cain pictures of the period are about people who want money and each other. Mildred wants respectability, and not even for herself, which makes this the bleaker film. The PG certificate is accurate; the cruelties are all spoken, and a child would miss most of them. Watch it with your mother, or with someone who has one, and do not expect the conversation afterwards to be easy. It reached British cinemas on 13 April 1946, and the only thing in it that has dated is the furniture. *Fi1m score 83, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics are on the film’s side: eleven of the twelve reviews are positive. The praise gathers around Joan Crawford, whose Mildred is called steely, headstrong and compelling even by those who do not usually warm to her, and around Michael Curtiz’s control of a story that runs melodrama and noir side by side. The mother-daughter relationship draws most of the admiration, and several reviews single out the photography of 1940s suburban California. The spread is narrow; most scores sit in the seventies. The one mixed voice is The New York Times, writing on release, which finds the film short of driving force and the daughter hard to believe. The 1945 notices are cooler than those written since; the warmest come from critics looking back, who read it as a class fable about a woman blocked at every turn by the men around her. The Los Angeles Times notes it is less faithful to the novel than later adaptations. ### Reviews we read (12) - **Little White Lies**, David Jenkins (4/5/5): The critic calls this Curtiz's masterpiece, a knotty, invigoratingly bleak women's picture-noir hybrid that remains a tight genre film accounting for real life's rocky terrain. They single out the combustible mother-daughter dynamic and Crawford's headstrong performance for praise. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/mildred-pierce) - **Los Angeles Times**, Justin Chang (90/100, inferred): Michael Curtiz’s 1945 film remains a rip-roaring entertainment and noir classic, even if not as faithful to the novel as later adaptations. Joan Crawford won an Oscar for her performance as the single mother-turned-restaurateur whose good intentions pave the road to hell. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-critic-choice-20170223-story.html) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): The critic finds Michael Curtiz’s noir thriller utterly gripping for its narrative control, photography of vanished 1940s suburban California, and Joan Crawford’s compelling central performance. Crawford is singled out as an electrifying diva presence in a story of pride, social shame and passionate but unreturned maternal love. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/apr/13/culture.peterbradshaw2) - **Empire**, Angie Errigo (80/100, inferred): The film is a superbly nasty noir that plays havoc with the era's American ideals of women, home, mom and her apple pie. Throbbing melodrama doesn't come with more conviction, and Mildred is compelling even to those usually turned off by the tough Crawford. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/mildred-pierce-review/) - **Evening Standard**, Alexander Walker (70/100, inferred): The role rescued Joan Crawford and was largely her own story, prophetic of her real life as a success-driven mother who loses her daughter's love. The American Dream falls to pieces in Mildred's case, with a stinging rebuke when she slaps her ungrateful child. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/mildred-pierce-7434129.html) - **Slant Magazine**, Chuck Bowen (70/100, inferred): The critic praises Curtiz’s 1945 melodrama for its focus on a determined woman’s struggles in a male-dominated world and the way it blends noir elements with class fable and mother-daughter drama. Crawford’s powerhouse performance, especially in key emotional scenes, is singled out as virtuosic and central to the film’s resonance. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/mildred-pierce-4k-uhd-blu-ray-review-michael-curtiz/) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (70/100, inferred): The film contains enough excitement to jolt even the most lethargic customer despite its length, with a deft adaptation of Cain's story of mother love, murder, and blackmail. The critic praises the lucid photography and Crawford's subdued, reasonable performance amid a highly competent cast. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1945/10/06/1945-10-06-095-tny-cards-000020290) - **The Times**, Ed Potton (★★★★☆): The critic calls it a classic Hollywood comeback vehicle for Joan Crawford in the title role of this noirish melodrama from Michael Curtiz, noting her mesmerising, steely and teary performance. Crawford’s rise from housewife to restaurateur is highlighted alongside the fractious mother-daughter relationship. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/film/article/film-review-mildred-pierce-1945-bxvdmxmgs) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): The cleanup job on Cain's novel has resulted in a class feature, showmanly produced and tellingly directed, that keeps the development adult while skirting the censorable. The dramatics are heavy but skillfully handled, with Joan Crawford reaching a peak of her acting career. [Read](https://variety.com/1944/film/reviews/mildred-pierce-2-1200414499/) - **The New York Times** (50/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a tortured drama that will likely succeed with audiences despite its demanding premise and lack of driving force. Joan Crawford gives a sincere and effective performance as the troubled mother, though the direction lets the character of the daughter become incredible. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1945/09/29/archives/the-screen-mildred-pierce-warner-drama-starring-joan-crawford-new.html) - **Paste**, Andy Crump (90/100, inferred): The film succeeds on the strength of Joan Crawford's definitive performance as the central character, a strong woman driven by love for her children but stymied by patriarchal society. It is one of noir’s most sympathetic and purely humanist tales, sandwiched within a probing whodunit. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/1940s/the-50-best-films-of-the-1940s) - **Eye for Film**, Chris (85/100, inferred): The critic calls it one of the best black-and-white classics, praising its sharp script full of camp, emotional punch, stellar performances by Joan Crawford and others, and strong cinematography and direction by Michael Curtiz. They highlight the noir mystery elements, Crawford's Oscar-winning comeback role as a determined self-made woman, and the film's enduring appeal as an overly theatrical but delightful tale. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/mildred-pierce-film-review-by-chris) ## Details - **Director:** Michael Curtiz - **Director:** Michael Curtiz - **Screenplay:** Ranald MacDougall - **Novel:** James M. Cain - **Cinematography:** Ernest Haller - **Editor:** David Weisbart - **Music:** Max Steiner - **Costume design:** Milo Anderson - **Producer:** Jerry Wald - **Cast:** Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce; Jack Carson as Wally Fay; Zachary Scott as Monte Beragon; Eve Arden as Ida Corwin; Ann Blyth as Veda Pierce Forrester; Bruce Bennett as Albert 'Bert' Pierce; Lee Patrick as Maggie Biederhof; Moroni Olsen as Inspector Peterson - **Runtime:** 1h 51m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 20 October 1945 - **Genres:** Crime, Drama - **Budget:** $1 million - **Box office:** $6 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoOr_OoHbv4 ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, AU, BR, CA, CL, ES, FR, GB, IE, IT, MX, NZ, RO, RS, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1946: Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated); Best Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *Stella Dallas* (1937): Barbara Stanwyck’s mother sacrifices everything for a daughter; the model Mildred was built on. - *Double Indemnity* (1944), Fi1m 92: Cain’s other great adaptation, with the murder left in and nobody baking. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/double-indemnity.md) - *The Reckless Moment* (1949): Joan Bennett covers for her daughter and gets blackmailed for it; Ophuls at his most domestic. - *Autumn Sonata* (1978): Bergman puts a mother and daughter in one room and lets them say everything. - *Mildred Pierce* (2011), Fi1m 70: Todd Haynes’s five-part version restores Cain’s novel, murder-free, with Kate Winslet doing the work. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/mildred-pierce.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/mildred-pierce-1945