Double Indemnity (1944) - Wilder's noir classic

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What unsuspecting imbecile would guess that this glamorously pink poster for Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity advertises one of the most notoriously devious thrillers of all time?

QUICK REVIEW:

Barbara Stanwyck (The Lady Eve (1941)) is the 'woman without a conscience', who persuades insurance agent Neff (Fred MacMurray (The Caine Mutiny (1954))) to murder her husband for her, so as to collect the 'double indemnity'!

- And Edward G. Robinson (Key Largo (1948)) is the pedantic, deeply engaged boss Keyes, who in a manner of minutes explains to us the troubles of the insurance business.
Austrian-Hungarian master filmmaker Billy Wilder (The Apartment (1960)) wrote the adaptation of James M. Cain's (Mildred Pierce (1941)) 1936 novel with detective fiction specialist Raymond Chandler (The Blue Dahlia (1946)), and they created the snappy, dirty dialog that seems to nearly produce sparks between the leads.
Wilder himself was extremely proud and fond of Double Indemnity; especially the fact that Cain himself praised the film and some of its new devices as better than his own. Alfred Hitchcock wrote: "Since Double Indemnity, the two most important words in motion pictures is 'Billy' and 'Wilder'."
The film is also often called the first film noir, - a term that was unknown at the time, (until a French critic coined it in 1946.)

Watch the original trailer for the film here

Cost: 0.92 mil. $
Box office: 5.7 mil. $ (North America only)
= Big hit (at least)
[The Hollywood majors had been interested in adapting Cain's novel since its first publication in Liberty magazine, but the Hays Office Production Code of the day scared them from it, until Wilder and Paramount decided to do it against the Office's warnings several years later. Wilder and Chandler developed a tumultuous writers' friendship during the writing stage, and the film was shot around Los Angeles with 3 of the time's biggest stars, who, together with Wilder, 'ate' 40 % of the total budget: 0.1 mil. $ for Stanwyck, MacMurray and Robinson, and 70k$ for Wilder. The film was released to acclaim and some controversy over its theme of planning and carrying out a murder, unseen in major US movies at the time. The film's global gross is unknown, but it drew 1.8 mil. admissions in France in 1946 (after the end of WWII.) It got nominated for 7 Oscars but won none: Wilder ridiculed the big winner of the night, Leo McCarey and his Going My Way (1944), by sticking his foot out so that McCarey stumbled on his way to receive his Best Director Oscar. Double Indemnity inspired a well of imitations and has become a classic in American culture. It was re-released for two days in 2015 by TCM. Double Indemnity is # 83 on IMDb's Top 250 rated films, and it is certified fresh at 96 % with a 9 average on Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Double Indemnity?

Mildred Pierce (2011, miniseries) - Haynes' spin on the Cain classic is a luxury

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1 Time Film Excess Award Winner:

Best Costumes: Ann Roth

4 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (lost to Bérénice Bejo for The Artist)
Best Supporting Actor: Brían F. O'Byrne (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Costumes: Ann Roth (won)
Best Production Design: Mark Friedberg, Peter Rogness, Ellen Christiansen (lost to Boardwalk Empire S2)

+ Best Miniseries of the Year

The great Kate Winslet portrays Mildred Pierce in Todd Haynes' miniseries

Mildred Pierce is Todd Haynes' (Far from Heaven (2002)) five-part HBO miniseries, written by Haynes and Jonathan Raymond (Meek's Cutoff (2010)), based on James M. Cain's (The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934)) same-titled 1941 classic, previously adapted as Michael Curtiz's same-titled 1945 masterpiece.

Part-by-part rundown (contains SPOILERS):

Part 1: Los Angeles, 1931: Mildred has a fight with her unfaithful husband, who leaves her and their daughters: Small Ray and the spoiled and snobbish Veda. After a one-time passion, Mildred's desperation starts nagging, and she has to eat up the degradation of taking a waitress job to keep afloat. But Veda's condemnation lurks...
Part 2: 1931: Mildred keeps her head high and soon has a small pie-production going, as also her waitressing job leads to friendships and new knowledge. She finalizes their divorce, following lawyer Wally's advice, so that she can open her own chicken restaurant. After a showdown with naughty daughter Veda, she still puts great importance in the young girl's thoughts. An impulsive romantic outing following her last day as a waitress with rich, idle Monty ends in tragedy, as daughter Ray expires in the hospital from sudden illness. Mildred is now alone with Veda.
Part 3: 1931-1933: Mildred opens the restaurant after Ray's funeral, - with the help of a few friends, - and its opening exceeds all expectations. Her friend Lucy (Melissa Leo (Flight (2012))) gets booze into the place, and Mildred's relationship with ex-husband Bert has improved. Monty goes bankrupt and gets kept by Mildred, while he back-stabs her to Veda, who takes music lessons and puts her mother down, still unpunished. Mildred leaves Monty in a New Year's Eve storm ...
Part 4: 1937-1938: Veda is now a grown, young woman, and she and Mildred finally take a big fight with each other, which Evan Rachel Wood (The Ides of March (2011)), who enters the miniseries as Veda here, plays with some misplaced sentimentality. - Because the dialog is hard as slaps, as her deplorable extortion scheme now sees the light of day, to Mildred's shock. Veda gets kicked out by her miserable mother, who, nevertheless, goes searching for her again in Hollywood, lonely and sad. Bert locates her as a vocal talent on the radio, much to Mildred's elation.
Part 5: 1938-1940: Mildred, who has grown successful, meets Monty again and, more or less inexplicably, takes him back, and they get married, after he has made her buy a smaller mansion in Pasadena. Veda also resurfaces, and Mildred showers her with money and attention, SPOILER until she finds her and Monty in bed together... - And tries to strangle the harlot! Mildred's business is also lost, but Bert is there, and the two decide to get remarried. Veda returns for one last, unpleasant appearance at the nuptials. "To hell with her", the two parents finally agree, after she has run off to New York.

Haynes gives Mildred Pierce his very own spin here, as he subdues his hankering for production abundance instead of some Spartan 1930s feel and a camera that always rests on and probes tremendous Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road (2008)), who is in virtually every shot and has stated that the 14 week shoot of the miniseries was her hardest since Titanic (1997).
As Part 1 ends, my feeling was that Caine's novel could be drawn out to these 336 minutes without problems, but by Part 4 I did feel that the story was getting stretched to some degree. The miniseries avoids most of the format's pitfalls very well, partly due to fine images that heighten a kind of simple beauty (by Edward Lachman (Carol (2015))), and partly due to some great actors: Besides Winslet, Morgan Turner (Quitters (2015)) as young Veda, Guy Pearce (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)) as Monty and especially Brían F. O'Byrne (Jimmy's Hall (2014)) as Bert is excellent.
In the final part, Mildred's trials do bend over into the soapish, unfortunately, and the sometimes pitiful Mildred Pierce of this reiteration is less heartbreaking than formidable Joan Crawford's portrayals in the 1945 movie version.
Haynes' Mildred Pierce is still a handsome and well-acted luxury to watch.

Best episode:

Part 1: Written by: Haynes, Raymond. Directed by: Haynes
Mildred becomes a single mother of two and has to take a job as a waitress, - which is shown in amusing, precise details.

Related posts:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Evan Rachel Wood as adult Veda Pierce in Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce

Kate Winslet as Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce

Watch the trailer for the miniseries here

Cost: 20 mil. $
Box office: None (TV-miniseries)
= Uncertain
[Mildred Pierce's premiere ratings fell from a 1.2 mil. viewers to around a mil. in the following parts, which isn't too impressive. The miniseries did draw praise critically and a long list of Emmy nominations, winning 5; for Winslet, Pearce, Art Direction, Casting and Music Composition. Mildred Pierce is rotten at 50 % with a 6.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes, but note that this is only based on 6 reviews.]

What do you think of Mildred Pierce?