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- Title
Feminist Film Theory and Women's History: Mildred Pierce and the Twentieth Century.
- Authors
Weiss, Julie
- Abstract
The article focuses on the film "Mildred Pierce." "Mildred Pierce" is the story of an overly-devoted mother framed within a murder mystery. The film becomes the police's, and the audience's, search for the motive behind the murder, and for the person who pulled the trigger. The main character, Mildred, tells her story in flashbacks while being interrogated at the police station, a story of motherhood, family and professional success. When the film was released in October 1945, it was met with mixed reviews that reveal the difficulty contemporary critics had classifying it, even agreeing on its story and characterizations. On the subject of motherhood, critics described it as a story of mother love, but also as the enormous and unrewarded sacrifices that a mother makes for her spoiled, greedy daughter, and about a middle class housewife who is willing to do anything, including murder, to provide things for her selfish little she-wolf of a daughter. Critics grasped for the film's larger significance as well, asserting that it was a bitter commentary on suburbia and life among the decadent and the rich, and about suburban grass-widowhood and the power of the native passion for money and all that money can buy.
- Subjects
MILDRED Pierce (Film); MOTION pictures; PERFORMING arts; FEMINISM; WOMEN'S history; CRITICS
- Publication
Film & History (03603695), 1992, Vol 22, Issue 3, p74
- ISSN
0360-3695
- Publication type
Article