In an attempt to raise her two daughters, Mildred Pierce, a smart and hard-working woman, whose husband left her for another woman, opens a small restaurant, in order to earn her livings, while dealing with her elder daughter, who wants a lot of money.
You don't think of Michael Curtiz, the great house director of Warner Bros. spectacles and prestige pictures, as one of the great noir directors but the opening twenty minutes or so is a master class in film noir directing...
All this is good melodrama and fair entertainment, but it is much closer to the waltz-time schmalz of Kathleen Norris than to the fox-trot brass of James M. Cain.
Considered a film noir classic, it is more of a soap opera, despite the fact that the story revolves around a murder mystery. It is a story which artfully combines cynicism and sentimentality.
