“Mildred Pierce,” the classic film noir-meets-melodrama that won Joan Crawford her only Oscar, was released on this day in 1945, 70 years ago. Like many of Crawford’s pictures, Michael Curtiz’s ...

On its surface, “Mildred Pierce” is the story of a woman who struggles to keep her family afloat in Depression Era Los Angeles by opening a small restaurant, all the while enabling a monster of a ...

For me, the moment when “Mildred Pierce” really comes alive is when Mildred, after a shift as a waitress, takes stock of the kitchen. Changed back into her regular clothes, she surveys the pantry and ...

The HBO five-part miniseries Mildred Pierce, directed by independent filmmaker Todd Haynes and based on the 1941 novel by American author James M. Cain (1892-1977), is a serious and commendable effort ...

TV REVIEW: HBO’s miniseries of the classic trades noir for melodrama. By Tim Goodman Kate Winslet as Mildred Pierce is seduced by rich slacker Monty, played by Guy Pearce. Everything was aligned for ...

The Mildred Pierce who was created by James M. Cain in his 1941 novel was an ambitious lower-middle-class woman whose husband left her, whose daughter Veda felt contempt for her, and who, via hard ...

The 1945 movie Mildred Pierce starred Joan Crawford as an ambitious woman capable of anything — even murder. But it turns out that this film noir was quite a departure from the novel it was based on.

Melodrama is a loaded word, conjuring silent-film villains tying pigtailed girls to railroad tracks. Or black-and-white "weepies" whose music crescendoes as Bette Davis or Greta Garbo face The Worst ...

Glendale, Calif., is a perfectly amiable upper-middle-class Los Angeles suburb: very manicured; very clean; very, you know, Caucasian. It's 1931, and on a tidy block in this tidy town dwells the ...

Hollywood legend Joan Crawford may have died in 1977, but she’s having a great April. On FX’s new series “Feud,” Jessica Lange stars as Crawford in a pitch-perfect recreation of her rivalry with Bette ...

Todd Haynes began his career as a daring provocateur with “Poison” 20 years ago. While he continued to work against the grain, from “Safe” to “I’m Not There,” as his profile has grown, so has the ...