Mildred Pierce and Sexual Antagonism
Pam Cook's assertion that Mildred Pierce is a mixed genre film in which the male voice of the film is in direct combat with the female voice. As is such there is a lot on which revolves around the break up of the marriage between Mildred and Albert. The very absence of a leading male character only emphasises the male voice even more in spite, or even because of this taking place. It is with this that Cook states shows just how much female sexuality is brutally and forcefully repressed.1 The feeling that only order can be restored with a male character in the household is fascinating but behind that lies something far much more murky and troubling to be dealt with in such black and white terms.
Throughout the film we see men who are either weak willed, corrupt or as somewhat slightly sinister. These identifications can be made by the three leading male characters Albert, Wally and Monty.2 As we see in the break up, Albert is emasculated because he has no job, times are hard and money's tight and this causes a great friction between himself and Mildred, not helped by the fact that there is a suspicion he may be cheating with Mrs. Biederhof, something which Veda herself plays upon.
There is Wally, a wise-cracking cynical lawyer who will do whatever it takes to get the best for his client no matter how seedy, unseemly and even morally wrong that may be. In Mildred's daughter, Veda, he has an outright field day in catering for her ever more devious ways.
As much as this film is about Mildred, it is also about Veda. While Mildred wants to make a hard fist of earning her money, working honest and hard for it while Veda is a malevolent daughter from hell. She concocts plans of marriage, divorce and every sort of morally corrupt idea you can think of while living off Mildred's vast fortune as her diner franchise grows and grows. There is also the somewhat troubling part of which Veda and Monty, Mildred's second husband, occurs. Thus with this film, we see two very different sides of women much as we see the same of men.
This ambiguity is at the heart of the movie and while only scratching the surface of this film, it's only when the film resolves itself around a police officer who allows Mildred to tell her story through the use of flashback to restore the "male voice" with which the film had lacked up to that point according to Cook. Indeed, it is with the classic opening of the curtains to allow daylight1 that we begin to see the clarity with which was missing.
The conflict with which this movie constantly plays with is the reason with which this movie is a classic of both film noir genre and women's movie genre lies in its complexities. It gives no easy answers and allows the film to unfold without resorting to cheap, tacky, happy endings with which to end this movie. It conforms to a realism in that justice must pay which is the reason for its success.
1. The main source of this was due in thanks to Pam Cook's essay "Duplicity in Mildred Pierce" which can be found in E. Ann Kaplan's essay compendium Women in Film Noir which was published by the BFI. An online account of Pam Cook's essay can be found however at http://academics.smcvt.edu/kshea/403reserve_98/Cook.%20Duplicity%20in%20Mildred%20Pierce.pdf
2. All characters names were taken from www.imdb.com
Throughout the film we see men who are either weak willed, corrupt or as somewhat slightly sinister. These identifications can be made by the three leading male characters Albert, Wally and Monty.2 As we see in the break up, Albert is emasculated because he has no job, times are hard and money's tight and this causes a great friction between himself and Mildred, not helped by the fact that there is a suspicion he may be cheating with Mrs. Biederhof, something which Veda herself plays upon.
There is Wally, a wise-cracking cynical lawyer who will do whatever it takes to get the best for his client no matter how seedy, unseemly and even morally wrong that may be. In Mildred's daughter, Veda, he has an outright field day in catering for her ever more devious ways.
As much as this film is about Mildred, it is also about Veda. While Mildred wants to make a hard fist of earning her money, working honest and hard for it while Veda is a malevolent daughter from hell. She concocts plans of marriage, divorce and every sort of morally corrupt idea you can think of while living off Mildred's vast fortune as her diner franchise grows and grows. There is also the somewhat troubling part of which Veda and Monty, Mildred's second husband, occurs. Thus with this film, we see two very different sides of women much as we see the same of men.
This ambiguity is at the heart of the movie and while only scratching the surface of this film, it's only when the film resolves itself around a police officer who allows Mildred to tell her story through the use of flashback to restore the "male voice" with which the film had lacked up to that point according to Cook. Indeed, it is with the classic opening of the curtains to allow daylight1 that we begin to see the clarity with which was missing.
The conflict with which this movie constantly plays with is the reason with which this movie is a classic of both film noir genre and women's movie genre lies in its complexities. It gives no easy answers and allows the film to unfold without resorting to cheap, tacky, happy endings with which to end this movie. It conforms to a realism in that justice must pay which is the reason for its success.
1. The main source of this was due in thanks to Pam Cook's essay "Duplicity in Mildred Pierce" which can be found in E. Ann Kaplan's essay compendium Women in Film Noir which was published by the BFI. An online account of Pam Cook's essay can be found however at http://academics.smcvt.edu/kshea/403reserve_98/Cook.%20Duplicity%20in%20Mildred%20Pierce.pdf
2. All characters names were taken from www.imdb.com
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