A triumph of Hollywood expressionism, mother-daughter plots, shoulder pads, and, for our purposes, domestic architecture. Joan Crawford's Mildred Pierce is a divorcee who pulls herself up by her own T-straps, opening a restaurant that is successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams. But this is L.A., the wild dream factory, so it's not enough for Veda (Ann Blyth), the daughter Mildred loves too much but not well. Veda takes the love, chews it up and spits it back and says, what else ya got. Well, honey, I've got this handsome ne'er-do-well new husband... L.A. was and is a locus for generational conflict-hardworking, perhaps transplanted, parents handing life on a platter to first-generation strangers, monsters of privilege in a culture of grasping. From a small bungalow that whispers “ruffled apron,” mother and daughter move to a multilevel thingy that screams arriviste, passing through Zachary Scott's glass oceanfront home (L.A.'s indigenous architecture, Thom Andersen teaches us, is a tipoff to bad character). For built-in nostalgia, the comforting, circular frame of “Mildred's,” the restaurant, is to die for. Literally.