TCM Pick O' The Day: Monday, February 9th

12:45pm PST – Mildred Pierce (1945) – A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society. Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden Dir: Michael Curtiz BW-111 mins, TV-PG

An interesting exercise would be to watch a double feature of the just released “He’s Just Not That Into You” and today’s pick as example number 11,283 of what’s wrong with Big Hollywood. Liberals dominate Big Hollywood and more women are in positions of power than ever before, and yet “Into You,” like most female driven films today, alternately portrays its five female leads as home wreckers, one-dimensional neurotics, or pathetically needy near-stalkers — but all are as emotionally dependent on men as is possible. Compare that to Hollywood 64 years ago when men (many of them conservative) dominated the film industry and created a slew of top-shelf melodramas populated with complicated, flawed, but very human and usually very strong (at least at the fade) women like Mildred Pierce.

For her work here as a mother who goes too far in order to satisfy an ungrateful daughter, Joan Crawford would finally win the Best Actress Oscar she wanted badly enough to leave her home of two decades at MGM in order to sign with Warner Brothers. Good thing too, for this would become her defining role, and rightly so. Crawford’s thoroughly convincing performance carries the picture and makes you believe every melodramatic (in a good way) turn and twist of the plot.

Part noir, part soaper, “Mildred Pierce” is based on James M. Cain’s bestseller about a smart, independent woman blinded by maternal love. The story opens on her making a bad choice and then takes us through the journey required to help her realize that, including failed marriages, the rise and fall of a self-made business, and ultimately murder.

At the end of the film, when we leave Mildred, her life’s pretty much in shambles. However, we also know to what extent it’s possible that “happily ever after” is finally within her grasp. And not because of some man who came to his senses (set to a familiar pop song) to complete her.