Well done story that paints a realistic portrayal of a woman's struggle for success during the depression era.This story gives me thoughts of a previous read novel Revolutionary Road by Yates which also was adapted into big screen well. They really are both of similar tones. A decline of the family structure, loss of possessions dear to them in this world, a really heart warming and life learning story. Is there more light at the end of the tunnel for the main protagonist Mildred? You are taken through the to's and fro's of a mother-daughter relationship. Can Mildred give her kids the right upbringing financially and emotionally? She certainly has a lot of determination and love but it's not a one sided coin there's the negative forces around this enduring woman.I have seen the movie a while back but really can't recollect much of it, I will be watching the tv adaption soon. There's quite a few remakes and adaptations to watch soon and out already The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre, Brighton rock and A Game of Thrones. I am eagerly waiting on The Talisman By Straub and King and The The Dark Tower series by Stephen King to arrive to screen.Movie and Book update June 6 2011 Still yet to finish the new mini-series and i want to watch the original but i found a good review by The man himself Stephen King will post it below under spoilers and some images until i get round watching it. This is what Stephen King said about the remake "There’s terrific acting in Todd Haynes’s chilly remake. Melissa Leo gives a tough-as-nails performance as Mildred’s one friend, Brían F. O’Byrne is perfect as Mildred’s clueless but basically good-hearted first husband, and as for Winslet and Pearce … holy crow."The rest of his thoughts in the spoilerhttp://more2read.com/?review=mildred-pierce-by-james-m-cain(view spoiler)[Kate Winslet Is Mommie Dearest in Mildred Pierceby Stephen KingMarch 20, 2011 | 10:54pmWinslet and Evan Rachel Wood burn up the screen in the spectacular HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce. In this week's Newsweek, Stephen King reviews the chilly Todd Haynes remake.As the 1946 Academy Awards approached, there wasn’t a lot of suspense about where the best-actor and best-picture trophies would wind up; Ray Milland and The Lost Weekend looked like shoo-ins. The best-actress competition, however, was a horse race. The general consensus was that Joan Crawford probably deserved the Oscar for her portrayal of Mildred Pierce in the film of the same name, but three of the other nominated actresses—Ingrid Bergman, Jennifer Jones, and Gene Tierney—seemed more likely to win. The films those three women starred in were sunnier (particularly Bergman’s The Bells of St. Mary’s), and the actresses themselves were better-liked. Crawford was arrogant, overmannered, and difficult to work with. “I wouldn’t sit on her toilet,” Bette Davis once famously said.Arrogant she may have been; stupid she was not. Terrified of losing, she pretended to be sick on the big night. The film’s director, Michael Curtiz—originally dismayed to be saddled with such a difficult leading lady—accepted on her behalf. Crawford welcomed reporters into her bedroom only after her win was safely in the bag.There’ll be no such difficulties at this year’s Emmy Awards, when Kate Winslet will very likely accept her own award. She isn’t disliked in the Hollywood community, has no diva reputation (at least that I’ve been able to discover), she got to work from a script that closely follows James M. Cain’s high-voltage story (the 1945 version veers wildly from the book, adding a ridiculous murder plot), and she acts rings around Crawford.Does this make HBO’s five-part miniseries—directed by Todd Haynes and gorgeously photographed by previous Haynes collaborator Edward Lachman—the television event of the spring? Um … well … that sort of depends on your sensibilities, Constant Viewer. If you’re into Bright & Sunny, I suggest five evenings of Frasier reruns. Or you could put The Bells of St. Mary’s in your Netflix queue. If, however, darkly compelling drama about people who aren’t particularly likable (plus one nasty little girl who grows into a truly monstrous young woman) is your cup of bitter tea, you won’t want to miss it.Mildred Pierce opens in Glendale, Calif., in 1931, and closes there about 10 years later. During the years between, Mildred trudges with grim and not particularly admirable fortitude from one disaster to the next, dragging Veda, her harpy of a daughter, behind her like an anchor. Mildred survives—somehow—but the viewer is left with the sense that none of her victories mean much, and is apt to greet the credit roll at the end of part five with a sigh of relief. Don’t get me wrong: this is compelling viewing, but when Mildred’s tale finally wound up, I felt a little as I did when, as a child, I finally figured out how to get a Chinese finger-puller off my thumbs.When we meet Mildred, she’s putting the finishing touches on one of the cakes she sells and simultaneously tossing her cheating husband out on his ear. She accomplishes both tasks with aplomb, going after poor, bewildered Bert Pierce with the rat-a-tat delivery of a gangster’s moll in a Cagney picture: “What do you do with her? Play rummy with her a while, then unbutton that red dress she’s always wearing without any brassiere under it, and flop her on the bed? And then have yourself a nice sleep, and then get up and see if there’s some cold chicken in the icebox, and then play rummy some more, and then flop her on the bed again? Gee, that must be swell.”Meanwhile, there’s the awful Veda to consider. She’s a monster, but not one (like Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed) who comes out of nowhere; she is her own mother with all the grace notes removed. Mildred, at least, is capable of love. In Veda, love has been annealed to a hard diamond of ambition. Worse, Mildred becomes her willfully blind enabler. “I don’t want her to just have bread,” Mildred tells her friend, Lucy. “I want her to have cake.”Mildred is finally forced to take work as a waitress, although she refuses to breathe a word about it to her children. Ray, the cheerful younger daughter, probably wouldn’t care one way or another, but Veda would be horrified and scornful. Mildred herself is horrified, and that is one of the things that makes her so hard to like. The other is her grim refusal, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, to see that she is nursing a viper in her bosom. And when Ray dies of a fever, the rattlesnake is the only one left in the nest.Although the mini’s chief selling point with HBO audiences may be Mildred’s soapy, steamy romance with wastrel playboy Monty Beragon (beautifully played by Guy Pearce), the most vital sequences have to do with Mildred’s rise to success in a man’s world, first selling her pies and pastries to the hash house where she works, then opening her own restaurant. As distasteful as she finds her waitressing job, Mildred is a careful, almost predatory observer, and working in a come-n-get-it café teaches her all the pitfalls of food service. Chief among them are excess waste and too many choices. When she opens Mildred’s, there are two basic items on the menu: chicken and waffles. She becomes, in a sense, Colonel Sanders in a woman’s body—and quite the splendid body it is. Cain’s novel describes a lady of voluptuous charms. Joan Crawford was not that woman; Kate Winslet is.Mildred expands to three restaurants, experiences giddy success, and then loses everything (hence, back to Glendale). She blames the men who gave her too much credit and too much bad advice, but the real culprit is Veda, who hangs on her like a leech, bleeding Mildred dry until she blossoms as a coloratura soprano (something that happens late, with no foreshadowing, and in spite of her nonstop cigarette consumption). Veda leaves for New York, but not before committing one final act far too shocking for the 1945 version of Mildred Pierce to even contemplate—hence the trumpery murder plot. I think Veda’s last betrayal will jolt even modern viewers, and Evan Rachel Wood is amazing in her penultimate scene. Nudity has rarely looked so evil. Or so enticing.There’s terrific acting in Todd Haynes’s chilly remake. Melissa Leo gives a tough-as-nails performance as Mildred’s one friend, Brían F. O’Byrne is perfect as Mildred’s clueless but basically good-hearted first husband, and as for Winslet and Pearce … holy crow. I detest the term “chemistry” to describe actors playing people who are sexually attracted to each other, so let’s just say these two are in perfect, ferocious sync. Imagine Bogie and Bacall in hell and you’ll get the idea. Winslet and Pearce don’t just heat up Mildred Pierce; they damn near burn it down. If for no other reason, you may want to tune in to see two actors at the height of their creative powers and physical beauty.All the same, there are problems here. Haynes has shown his love for the Hollywood version of America’s past before, most notably in the remarkable but equally hard to like Far From Heaven (2002), and here it has gotten out of control. In words of one syllable? It’s too damn long. I suppose that sounds impudent, coming from a guy who’s written several doorstop-size novels, but I stand by it. When Emperor Joseph II purportedly told Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that his new opera had too many notes, Mozart supposedly replied, “Only as many as necessary, Your Highness.” Using that metaphor, the Haynes version of Mildred Pierce has way too much sheet music.In his memorable introduction to three of James M. Cain’s early novels, Tom Wolfe wrote: “Picking up a Cain novel [is] like climbing into a car with one of those Superstockers who is up to forty by the time your right leg is in the door.” In this version of Mildred Pierce, you are not only in the door by the time the story gets up to cruising speed; you have had time to buckle your seat belt, turn on the radio, leaf through the latest issue of Photoplay, and eat a Butterfinger.The Depression-era set decoration is perfect, and you get to appreciate all of it because Haynes lingers on each stucco bungalow, each deserted seaside road, each overdecorated Beverly Hills manse. There are soporific panning shots and at least one dolly-track sequence that seems well-nigh endless. Mildred and her friend, Lucy, are at the seashore, and I began to think they were going to walk all the way to San Diego. Perhaps even Mexico City. There are enough shots of a pensive Winslet seen through rain-beaded windshields to make you feel like screaming. Yes, she’s beautiful, I kept thinking, so why the hell isn’t the director getting her to do something more interesting than staring at the windshield wiper? Cain’s novels are quick, hard stabs to the heart. His most famous book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, is just 128 pages long. The original paperback version of Mildred Pierce was only 250 pages. You could read the whole thing aloud before the miniseries finishes. I think Cain would marvel at the acting and production values, but roll his eyes at the plodding pace. Probably Elmore Leonard, whose famous recipe for good entertainment is “leave out the boring parts,” would do the same.And yet Mildred Pierce has a visceral, snake-farm fascination. Any mother who’s ever had daughter troubles (I’d guess that would be most who have daughters) will be immediately engaged. And whatever other problems the mini may have, Haynes clearly conveys Cain’s basic message: when you allow a kid to grow up unfettered by conscience or scruples, the result is apt to be unpleasant. In his introduction, Tom Wolfe calls Veda “a little bitch.” Yet we finish able to offer Mildred at least conditional forgiveness. Veda is, after all, what she has, and Mildred fights for it, tooth and nail. And there’s this bonus: Haynes has given us Cain’s original shocker of a climax unvarnished and in lurid close-up.In the end, though, Winslet carries this show on her sturdy shoulders, and when someone hands her the golden winged lady next year, I’ll be the first to applaud. Did I hear someone out there say, “You’re jinxing her”? Nonsense. Winslet’s Mildred is a genuine star turn. How Joan Crawford would have loathed her. (hide spoiler)]
It bears the Vintage Crime label, but what kind of hard-boiled noir is this? There are no hoods planning elaborate heists. No gat-toting gangsters. No tarnished knights looking for clues down darkened alleys. No deviants stalking helpless dames. No crooked cops, cons or conmen. James Cain furnished two of the foundation stones for what was to become known years later as noir -- "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity" -- but in "Mildred Pierce," he largely strips away the external trappings of the subgenre to look inward. The crimes here are emotional. The violence is psychological. Also unusual for classic noir is Cain's protagonist: a woman.Mildred Pierce is newly single, having cut her shiftless, alkie dreamer of a husband loose. Once they hear of the split, Mildred's neighbors come over, the women to crow in the guise of commiseration, the men in the hopes of something more tawdry and desperate. The Depression isn't the best time for a single mother of two with no job and no job skills. And Mildred's oldest daughter, Veda, isn't the type to forgo the comforts due her class.After a frustrating and fruitless search for a job that will allow her to keep her pride and avoid Veda's contempt, Mildred gets the only work she can: slinging hash for 25 cents an hour. Cain writes about Mildred's first day at work like it was a gunfight at a botched bank robbery, orders and complaints and cutlery flying like bullets through the air. Mildred stays long enough to get an idea for how the restaurant business works. She's ambitious, and she can cook better food than what she delivers to tables as a waitress. Even during a Depression, there are certain things a human being just cannot do without. At the top of that list: Pie. And Mildred can bake a pie. So she decides to strike out on her own. A little manipulation, a little seduction, some slightly shady real estate deals, creative financing and a lot of sweat and effort, and Mildred has her own restaurant, offering chicken, waffles, pie and free parking.Mildred's finally making money, but she's also making the kind of friends she doesn't need. She may have kicked one worthless husband, but she hasn't kicked the habit of worthless men. Mildred's boyfriend, Monty, nips a steady stream of $10s and $20s from her pockets. However, Mildred's most destructive relationship is with her daughter Veda, who's going to make someone a fine succubus one day. Veda longs for a career in music, and although she's skilled, she hasn't got the talent to be truly special. She hates the commonness within herself and blames Mildred for the heredity that put it there. Mildred's devotion only fuels Veda's hate, which simply makes Mildred love harder."She was afraid of Veda, of her snobbery, of her contempt, her unbreakable spirit. And she was afraid of something that seemed always lurking under Veda's bland, phony toniness: a cold, cruel, coarse desire to torture her mother, to humiliate her, above everything else, to hurt her. Mildred apparently yearned for warm affection from this child. ... But all she ever got was a stagy, affected counterfeit."Fatalism is a common element in works of noir, and even nature seems to conspire against Mildred. When she plans to reclaim her dignity by staging a grand public kiss-off to embarrass Monty at a New Year's party, sunny Southern California is hit with an epic rainstorm. Mildred arrives bedraggled to find the party canceled, depriving her of an audience and leaving her trapped alone in a house with her leechy lover, who gets her likkered up and says, "I suppose there's nothing to do but go to bed."In "Dark City," Eddie Muller's essential book on film noir, he writes of Cain: "In his tales, the sacred conjugal bed is soaked with the sweat of illicit sex. Before long, the gleaming white kitchen tiles will be spattered with blood. For Cain, death and sex were inseparable."Cain was no Chandler. No one's going to hold his prose up as an example of the literary heights the language of crime fiction can attain. (Well, maybe Albert Camus would.) But he had a talent for getting his grimy fingernails under the sunny surface of American life in the promised land, peeling it back to expose all the worms writhing underneath. On the surface, "Mildred Pierce" reads like a rags-to-respectability soap opera -- a "woman's story." But underneath, it's cheap sex, tacky desire, greed, foiled ambition, curdled love, jealousy, hate, conniving, kink and ultimate doom for all involved.You know: a noir.
What do You think about Mildred Pierce (2015)?
James M. Cain's writing style in "Mildred Pierce" isn't terribly interesting, especially when compared with that of fellow Los Angeles crime novelist Raymond Chandler, and most of the characters are relatively one-dimensional, but the plot and the depiction of pre-war Los Angeles -- specifically the suburbs of Pasadena, Glendale and Laguna Beach -- make up for many of the book's weaknesses. And has there ever been a villain as much fun to hate as Veda Pierce?While hating Veda is fun, the reader ends up spending most of the novel wanting to throttle Mildred for falling for her daughter's deceptions over and over again. Are we supposed to sympathize with Mildred? Is it possible to feel bad for someone so naive?Even at the end, one feels Mildred would roll over yet again for Veda if she simply said the right thing. For those who think Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree" offers a lesson in the pitfalls of too much parental sacrifice, give "Mildred Pierce" a read.My favorite passages all entailed Pasadena's snobs looking down their noses at Glendale, which happens to be the city in which I live. I almost stopped hating the haughty Veda for a moment when she complained about "Glendale, and its dollar days, and its furniture factories, and its women that wear uniforms, and its men that wear smocks."
—Daniel
James M. Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice have always been two of my favorite crime novels. While Mildred Pierce was turned into something of a crime story in the movie starring Joan Crawford, the book is the fairly straight-forward story of a California woman who struggles to make a life for herself and her daughter, Veda, during the years of the Great Depression.As the book opens, Mildred throws her lazy, unfaithful husband out on his ear and become the single mother of two young daughters. Forced to fend for herself, she becomes a pie maker. She later takes a job as a waitress and through hard work and grim determination parlays the skills she learns on the job into owning her own restaurant. However, Veda, Mildred's elder daughter, has nothing but contempt for her mother's efforts and is embarrassed that her mother is so declasse.Veda, who is most certainly the daughter from Hell, aspires to higher things and never stops to appreciate the sacrifices that her mother makes on her behalf. Nor does she apparently ever stop to wonder how she, her sister and their mother would survive save for Mildred's efforts that Veda so casually mocks. The amazing thing is that Mildred is totally enchanted by this ungrateful urchin and bends over backwards to please her. Mildred constantly ignores and forgives the hateful things that Veda says and sacrifices her entire life to pleasing the little snot until, in the end, a serious crisis results.Cain has created here two of the most memorable characters in American fiction and has woven around them a gritty story of Mildred's struggle to survive and succeed, both in business and in her plaintive attempt to win her daughter's favor. I admire what he has done, but I can't say that I really enjoyed this book all that much. I simply could not identify or empathize with any of the characters, and my patience with Mildred Pierce ran out very early on. As terrible a thing as it is to say, were I Mildred Pierce, by the third or fourth chapter of this book, her darling Veda would have been in traction and I would have been in jail. But that, of course, would have made for a much shorter novel.
—James Thane
Mildred Pierce, ventotto anni ben portati, due bambine e un marito inetto e traditore, si ritrova sul lastrico quando decide di divorziare. Non è un buon momento per cedere all'amor proprio: la Grande Depressione proietta una lugubre ombra sull'economia americana, e né Glendale, tranquilla cittadina californiana, né la più popolosa Los Angeles, sembrano avere qualcosa da offrirle. Eppure, Mildred non può più sopportare di stare accanto a Bert, che la tradisce con una vedova dai seni ballonzolanti e non è in grado di trovarsi un lavoro da quando l'Anonima Pierce è fallita, ed eccola fare il suo ingresso in «quella grande istituzione americana che nessuno cita mai il 4 luglio: una vedova bianca con due bambine piccole da mantenere».Per continuare a provvedere a Ray, affettuosissima figlia minore, e a Veda, undicenne con manie narcisistiche e pretese di superiorità rispetto al gretto mondo borghese - ma proprio per questo straordinariamente ammirata e amata dalla madre -, Mildred è costretta a strisciare umilmente e a lungo davanti alle scrivanie dei centri di collocamento, sovraffollati di disoccupati molto più preparati di lei, e persino a compiacere Wally, ex collega di Bert, per ottenerne l'appoggio. Ridotta a esercitare il mestiere di cameriera, con grande vergogna e nascostamente a Veda per non perderne il rispetto, Mildred riesce a sbarcare il lunario dignitosamente sfruttando il suo unico talento, la pasticceria. Ben presto un progetto molto vivido si delineerà all'orizzonte della giovane madre: aprire con le sue forze un ristorante per provvedere ai bisogni della famiglia.Il romanzo di Cain, datato 1941, colpisce molto più per la vividezza dei personaggi che per la complessità della trama. Mildred è una protagonista straordinaria, e si rivela tale ancor più se si considera il periodo in cui è ambientato il romanzo e quello in cui è stato scritto. Da giovane moglie di un ricco borghese mai costretta al lavoro, Mildred attraverserà varie fasi d'emancipazione fino a divenire la ricca proprietaria di una piccola catena di ristoranti. Bella, intelligente, di buona volontà e smaliziata, il suo punto debole è il cieco amore verso la demoniaca Veda, inizialmente bambina viziata e capricciosa, poi donna perversa, ipocrita e calcolatrice, pronta a tutto per raggiungere denaro, ammirazione e una posizione sociale, e mossa da odio e vendetta nei confronti di una madre che rappresenta tutto ciò che più detesta: la modestia e le fatiche della borghesia. La turbolenta subalternità di una protagonista altrimenti forte e indipendente nei confronti della figlia che, subdolamente o palesemente, la ferirà in ogni modo possibile, un amore morboso perfettamente consapevole della crudeltà del suo oggetto e masochisticamente recidivo nel suo errare coinvolgeranno senza scampo il lettore, costringendolo a leggere e a soffrire con la sfortunata Mildred. Un dramma familiare imperdibile per i due emozionanti – nel bene o nel male - ritratti di donna che offre, per l'ambientazione americana perfettamente restituita, per lo stile di scrittura accurato e tuttavia essenziale.
—Sakura87
