Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce is a 1945 crime drama about a woman whose marriage falls apart and who devotes herself to her older daughter, Veda. After separating from her husband Bert, Mildred has to support the family on her own. She takes a job as a waitress, works hard and eventually builds a restaurant business of her own. Her daughter, used to a comfortable life, is demanding and hard to satisfy. Mildred's involvement with the businessman Wally Fay and the wealthy playboy Monte Beragon reshapes her life as her business grows. The film is set in California in the 1940s and was directed by Michael Curtiz.

Curtiz directed the film after Casablanca, as the seventeenth of the twenty-five films he directed in chronological order, ahead of Flamingo Road. Ranald MacDougall wrote the screenplay, and Jerry Wald produced it for Warner Bros. Pictures. Joan Crawford plays Mildred, with Jack Carson as Wally Fay, Zachary Scott as Monte Beragon, Eve Arden as Ida Corwin, Ann Blyth as Veda Pierce Forrester and Bruce Bennett as Bert Pierce. The credited cast runs to 58 names. Made for about one million dollars, the film took roughly six million dollars worldwide, a strong return for its studio.

On IMDb it holds 7.9 out of 10 from around 31,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.6 out of 10 from 464 votes. Film critics, rating it 8.1 out of 10 from fifty reviews, were somewhat more favourable than the general audiences. Its crime and drama classification reflects the story of ambition, family conflict and money that runs through the film.