Viva La Veda

Last night, Suzanne and I watched Mildred Pierce, the 1945 Joan Crawford film. It's about Mildred, a middle-class single mother unhealthily driven to spoil and impress her oldest daughter, Veda. It's a combination of film noir and melodrama - lots of moody, shadowy rooms with people smoking; lots of clipped, clever dialogue COMBINED WITH a central female character who worries about "making it" in a man's world, lots of tears glistening, mothers and daughters slapping each other across the face, etc.


(Mildred with the spoiled and, ultimately, sociopathic Veda.)

All in all, it was pretty awesome. Joan Crawford is interesting and she can shift her face from being open and attractive to stern and menacing on a dime. Jack Carson is super cool as the fast-talking, always-looking-for-an-angle Wally Fay and Eve Arden (who later played the principal in Grease) was terrific as Joan's wise-cracking assistant.

On the schedule tonight is The Day The Earth Stood Still. I can't go wrong with any movie that looks like this:



Right?