Galloping, rat-a-tat, quick-fire drama this isn't. Apart from an awkward romp with her husband's business partner, the rest of this opening episode is taken up with Mildred looking for a job and the shame of having to take on work (waitressing) beneath her station. The resulting row ends with his departure, from the house and from her life, leaving her with two girls to bring up alone. When we first meet her, she's painstakingly icing a cake to sell, before tackling her good-for-nothing husband about his infidelities. It's a beautiful performance, of a woman in dowdy dresses struggling to maintain her social status in the depression of the the 1930s. Kate Winslet's new Mildred is subtler and more nuanced.
I can picture Crawford, in all the pomp and glory of 1940s Hollywood melodrama, Acting with a capital A. I have seen it but clearly I don't remember it well enough to make any meaningful comparison between it and Todd Haynes's new five-part HBO mini-series version of Mildred Pierce (Sky Atlantic, Saturday). M y local video rental place didn't have a copy of Michael Curtiz's 1945 film Mildred Pierce for which Joan Crawford won an Oscar and I spent an unsuccessful evening trying to download it (legally, illegally, who knows, surely it's so ancient it doesn't matter?) from the internet.
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