This past week I was privileged to watch Mildred Pierce and Mildred Pierce: first the sumptuously produced, impeccably cast, hilarious at times and always scrupulously faithful version of James M. Cain's provocative Depression-era novel mounted for HBO by queer auteur/provocateur Todd Haynes, and then the 1945 Joan Crawford/Ann Blyth/Michael Curtiz Oscar-winning warhorse that is still one hell of an entertaining ride.
If you're a true fan of Crawford's impressively underplayed career comeback, if you relish Blyth's monster vixen and Jack Carson and Eve Arden's pushy best friends, or the film's shotgun marriage of feminine melodrama and manly noir, you may have a gag reflex toward any revisionist version, however faithful to Cain's novel. But if you're open to a totally fresh take on Mildred, scrubbed clean of noir but resonating with the reality of a driven mother surviving the Great Depression determined to see that her daughters have everything denied her, then the miniseries, overflowing with rambunctious, hard-drinking characters, may prove as addictive as one of Mildred's home-baked pies.
Adapted by Haynes and Jon Raymond with copious chunks of Cain's signature dialogue, Mildred Pierce is a tour de force of the Depression-era world where men were mothballed from the workforce while women enjoyed perks first envisioned during the 1920s' unprecedented prosperity. The new Mildred is explicit not only erotically, but also about the revised rules for extramarital affairs. In episode 1, no sooner has Mildred (the implacably dogged Kate Winslet) kicked out her jobless, once-wealthy hubby Bert (Brian F. O'Byrne) from their Glendale Spanish bungalow than Mildred's best friend Lucy Gessler (Oscar-winner Melissa Leo) advises her on how to manage the sudden advances from Bert's one-time real-estate partner, Wally Burgan (James LeGros).
Mildred is the opposite of a kept woman. Her initial success in the restaurant and baked-goods business will leave the men in her life feeling that her apron strings have become a noose. One of the narrative strengths of the book which Haynes employs to great advantage is having the audience know only what Mildred knows, so she is blindsided by a series of sucker punches, many launched by her resentful teenage daughter Veda (played at 11 by Morgan Turner, at 17 and beyond by Evan Rachel Wood).
Fueled by Haynes' mastery of the domestic drama and his sagacious updating of the work of melodrama masters Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, HBO's Mildred Pierce is a timely guide for surfing through a prolonged economic slump. Haynes gives us flashes of hardscrabble living offset by the era's gorgeously designed motor cars.
On the record
The last time I sat down with Todd Haynes, the gifted queer director was earning kudos for his Jean Genet-inspired anthology film Poison. Two decades later, the still shockingly boyish (at 51) filmmaker has firmly established himself as one of the most accomplished of the early-90s generation of New Queer Cinema artists. Here are excerpts from my conversation with Haynes in the Green Room of the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas.
Haynes began by discussing the 1945 Michael Curtiz Mildred Pierce. "I haven't watched it for years. It's never been my very favorite. I admire it: it's an incredibly beautiful piece of filmmaking. It's Hollywood filmmaking at its finest. But in terms of the themes, in terms of the mother/daughter relationship, it has to reduce a lot down."
David Lamble: Since you did it "straight," so to speak, it was funnier, and more apparent where the queen/camp DNA was. I was laughing all the way through. How did Kate Winslet become involved?
Todd Haynes: Mildred is described not only as a dirty blonde, but also as a young mother, much younger than Joan Crawford is to Ann Blyth in the film. Mildred was 17 when she had Veda, so she's 28 when we meet her in the story, which covers a nine-year span in LA throughout the Depression. Kate happened to fall right in the middle of that age-span.
Mildred has this intense way of coping by applying herself physically to her tasks, an intense work ethic, and a physicality about how she executes that. She's hands-on. Coupled with that is this sexual thing with Monty Beragon, the Guy Pearce character, who's fantastic. It's a risque, sexual kind of role play that they enter into together. In their sex is the one place where she feels kind of turned on by wearing the uniform, as opposed to it being something she has to hide.
Monty becomes somewhat of a gigolo in her hands. It's a very curious relationship – it's almost like she's tipping him the way she hates to be tipped in a restaurant. She's turning him into what she didn't what to be herself. Neither of her two primary guys go back to work right away.
None of the men really work. The women run the world in this story.
These women are not feminists, but they're strong women. It's an interesting distinction, which you make really clear here.
These women act because they have to. They're facing severe challenges, and they have to put bread on the table. But there's no sense that this is liberationist. There are no flags being waved in the process.
James LeGros as Wally, that's an astonishing transformation. The sex scene that Mildred and Wally have is so funny, it's like a road grader and a truck colliding.
There are character actors who we thought of for Wally, and James came in and he just did this reading for me that blew me away. It was so specific: the language, the dialect, the voice, that husky, scratchy voice of his.
Even at the end when he sets the claw in on Mildred, and for good reason, she's been profligate in a bubble mentality as we say, in the last episode when he sits down and rejoins the creditors at the table, there's this look of sad pain and resignation that adds a real note of compassion to that character.
HBO's Mildred Pierce airs in five episodes on the following schedule: Parts 1 & 2 air 4/2 on HBO main channel, plus 2/3, 22. Part 3 debuts on 4/3 (9:15 pm), plus 4/5, 6, 7, 9. Part 3 airs on HBO 2 on 4/4, 9, 10, 22. Parts 4 & 5 debut on HBO on 4/10.