Mildred Pierce is adapted from a novel by James M. Surrounded by ineffectual or conceited men, Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) gets a job as a waitress, masters the trade, and sets about opening a restaurant, all while beset by the usual condescension and ogling, which is often dressed up as looking out for Mildred’s best interests. Distinguishing Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce from many noirs, then, is its disarmingly and modernly casual sense of the reliable humiliation of life as a woman in a man’s world, particularly a woman determined to carve out her own niche in the work sector. American crime films and pulp writing aren’t normally considered as paragons of feminism, as they often see women as figures of asexualized competency or as femme fatales, those murderous succubae who use sex to socially empower themselves (though the potential necessity of that gambit in a world rigged against women is often under-considered).
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