"Under MichaelCurtiz' direction, Mildred Pierce was a disquieting mixture of '30s and'40s film styles-the suspicious, unsettling world of film noirintertwined with the open, daylit world of melodrama. Although the filmopens as a whodunit (who done killed Mildred's husband), as the storyunfolds-told by Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) in a series offlashbacks-the murder emerges as one of many interconnected crimes:crimes born, not of physical violence, but rather of emotional andpsychological needs, crimes rooted in family and work relationships.Filmed in 1945, as World War II was ending and the soldiers werereturning home anxious to get back to work, Mildred Pierce as housewifeturned baker, waitress and restaurant-chain owner, can be seen as thecinematic representation of female financial independence standing inthe way of conversion to a postwar (male-dominated) economy. And it isperhaps for this, more than for her family 'failures', that she isindicted." Kathy Geritz