Mildred Pierce

Mildred Pierce, made when she was 40, was the role that rescued Joan Crawford.

"I had been so hidden by the clothes and sets at MGM that nobody could tell whether I had talent or not," she said later.

To make it, in 1945, she'd gone over to Warner Bros. There, on the set, director Michael Curtiz, who had none of the courtier-like worship of immaculate femininity which was MGM's trademark, literally ripped the first dress she wore for a scene in Mildred Pierce from neck to waistline: "You and your Adrian shoulder pads!" he exploded.

It didn't matter that the dress hadn't the trademark epaulettes of the MGM costume designer: Curtiz was simply serving notice that Crawford had now come to rest in an intensely masculine domain whose film traditions honoured proletarian struggle. In fact, she found Mildred Pierce "the easiest role I ever played".

It was largely her own story, and it turned out to be a prophetic one, too. The theme of a success-driven mother who starts as a waitress and hauls herself up by her apron strings to acquire money, power and men, but loses the love of her daughter: this was Mommie Dearest in all but name. The American Dream of providing one's children with greater opportunities for success than one had for oneself falls to pieces in Mildred's case, as it was to do in Crawford's when little Christina Crawford told the story of life with Joan.

In both film and real life, the child was driven to an extreme act of rebellion. In the film, she pays for her mother's sins (as she sees them) by shooting her lover; in life, Christina made her mother's sins (as she saw them) pay off by assassinating her in print. So I can never watch this film without a slight shudder at the way life apes art.

Mildred's love for her family is exactly like Crawford's need to condition them against the world's harsh realities - but like Mildred, Crawford overdid it. There are no wire coat hangers in the film, but there is a rebuke just as stinging - when Mildred catches her child, played by Ann Blyth, across the face with a resounding slap for looking down her nose at her mother's struggle to get where she has. "Get out before I kill you," she rasps.

Years later, somewhat in innocence, I queried the list of engagements to open Pepsi-Cola factories - she was by then the widow of a Pepsi executive - that Crawford was undertaking right up to 23 December. "Just as well you kept Christmas for the family," I said. Not, in retrospect, a happy remark.

But she was equal to it. "Oh, Mr Walker... The family have all grown up and left me... I use Christmas to clean the apartment." Right on, Mildred!

Mildred Pierce
Cert: PG