No, you don’t have to be a Gay man to love Mildred Pierce. This film noir is one of my wife’s favorites–a Lifetime movie as high pop art. Based on the novel by James M. Cain, good, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama–featuring the most ungrateful daughter in screen history–has rarely looked this sharp:
I hope you don't have to be gay...Mildred Pierce is a great movie. And if anyone questions you, just say you like it because of Ann Blyth.
NICE.
Jack Carson played a good cad.
One of my all-time favorites, despite the (granted, very limited) presence of Butterfly McQueen in her typical role. My grandmom always used to mutter "That hussy!" when Ann Blyth would make her first appearance. Joan Crawford at the top of her game. And the cinematography was awesome.
Naturally, they're currently shooting a remake *sigh* but there is hope; HBO is producing it as a five-part miniseries (HBO is usually very good as a production house); it stars Kate Winslet and Guy Pearce among others who have actual acting talent, so it's not necessarily an update with the prettiest available faces and flavor-of-the-month types and they're keeping it in the Depression-era, so I don't expect an enormous departure from the source material or too much capriciously creative license. As far as it being remade, I can't say I didn't see it coming (I'm surprised it wasn't done sooner, and if it was it was certainly not of note), but they better get it right.
[3] HBO is doing a lot of good quality stuff these days including putting my favorite books to life (game of thrones). I'm pretty excited for a lot of what they are doing. Now i just need to subscribe at some point.
And Showtime does some interesting stuff too.
Don't know how they'll improve on the original Mildred but that never stopped them before. Also, Emily just read the novel and said it was quite different from the movie, so perhaps they'll explore some different angles.
[5] Yeah, given that they're expanding the premise to a five-parter, i anticipate it being more faithful to the novel and more emperical in terms of the avenues it explores; for example Milred's relationship with Ida: "Oh, men. I never yet met one of them that didn't have the instincts of a heel. Sometimes I wish I could get along without them..." I would expect that line to be more thoroughly developed as opposed to in the movie. If it were a straight remake of the film, I'd be more objectionable, but I trust HBO to make a high quality production instead of a glossy remake that takes many major departures from both the novel and the film.