Joan Crawford dominates as the industrious entrepreneur Mildred Pierce, whose indefatigable quest to build a better life for her daughter, Veda, ensnares her in a tangled thicket of domestic and professional calamity. Though the pitch of the performances and some plot points in Michael Curtiz’s crime drama lean into melodrama, Mildred’s twisted history is dense with duplicity, intrigue, shady business, and jumbled love affairs, shading her rags-to-riches crawl to the top with a noirish veil.
Crawford is the undeniable draw with her raw magnetism molded into a dynamic but refined performance, but Jack Carson gives a commensurate turn and provides much in the way of regressive humor as her rapacious business partner Wally Fay. While Anne Blyth is stunning in…