MILDRED PIERCE: solid gold entertainment with so much to say

MILDRED PIERCE is the golden age of Hollywood at it's very best - a compelling story beautifully told.

Joan Crawford deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar as the abandoned housewife and mother who claws her way to business success by sheer force of personality only to discover that money doesn't bring happiness. 
The film's subtext is that women who succeed in a man's world must be punished for their audacity. In Mildred's case she's cursed with the most ungrateful daughter (Ann Blyth) in the history of cinema and dragged down by the weak-willed, sponging and greedy men she chooses to surround herself with.
Bruce Bennett, an actor who exuded solidity and terminal dullness, is perfectly cast as Bert Pierce, Mildred's bland, weak, philandering husband whose abandonment of her for a woman who'll service his needs sets her off on the path to material success and emotional meltdown.

Mildred replaces him with Wally Fay (a bravura performance by the underrated Jack Carson), Bert's former business partner and a grade-A sleaze who literally drools at the mouth as he gropes her while describing what her wants to do to her. Unsurprisingly (to everyone except Wally) Mildred gives him the heave-ho when he introduces her to handsome, suave but impoverished playboy Monte Baragon (Zachary Scott), a man with little self respect and even less spine.Mildred's ambition emasculates Monte, consigning him to the role of the female in the relationship, dependent on handouts from Mildred to keep him in the style to which he is accustomed. Mildred meanwhile assumes an increasingly masculine attire. 

It's a message that would not have been lost on audiences when the film was first released in October 1945. Millions of men were returning home after service in World War Two expecting that the millions of women who'd taken their place in factories and many other traditionally male domains for the duration would now revert to their former status as wives, mothers and homemakers.

Even if we put aside the social context of the film's creation, MILDRED PIERCE remains a powerhouse production. Crawford is magnificent under the direction of the superbly talented Michael Curtiz. The film relaunched her career after she'd been ignominiously dumped by MGM and recast her as a woman destined to suffer for daring to believe she was the equal of any man. 
With so much to offer on so many different levels, MILDRED PIERCE is a must see film for anyone who is serious about cinema.

JIMMY THE GENT: more plot than there's space for

JIMMY THE GENT left me dazed and more than a little confused. Director Michael Curtiz packs more plot into the film's 67 minute running time than I could keep up with. Breakneck hardly begins to describe the pace at which this story moves.
As best as I could understand it, James Cagney is a geneologist (yes, a geneologist!) who earns his living by "finding" the heirs to industrialists, playboys and other assorted super-rich who've died without leaving a will. His main rival is the upright and erudite Charles Wallingham (Alan Dinehart) who also tracks down surviving relatives, but does it the honest way. His second in command is Joan Martin, played by Bette Davis, who used to work for Cagney and still has a secret crush on him  although she'll slap your face and call you a liar if you're to suggest such a thing. 
Now I know that genealogist is not the first occupation that comes to mind when thinking of James Cagney but the good news is that the profession has been adapted to fit his screen persona, rather than the other way around. Cagney plays the part just like he would a newspaper journalist, bookmaker, Broadway show producer, or gangster. Genealogy is just  another racket and Cagney makes no concessions to the part in his acting. If anything he's more manic than usual, bellowing away at his employees, conjuring up at least a hundred different angles to every situation, and stomping around with that stiff-legged strut so beloved by impersonators every since. The whole performance is topped off by a truly bizarre haircut more at home on the head of a World War One-era Prussian officer.
Davis by contrast had yet to make the jump from Warner Bros A-list contract player to bona fide film star replete with her own collection of highly imitatable mannerisms. Here, in the third of six films she was to make for the studio in 1934, she's a heavily made-up peroxide blonde in a part that could just as easily have been played by Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers.
JIMMY THE GENT is by no means a classic, but it is a fine example of the kind of product that rolled off the Warner Brothers production line at the rate of almost one a week during the period when Hollywood fully lived up to both words in the descriptor "dream factory."