don2507

This film, a sort of noir watched recently on TCM courtesy of the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller, is entertaining, sometimes in an inadvertent way. It's full of easily manipulable dim wits, including the protagonist who gets suckered into a very-likely-not-to-succeed impostor scheme, mindless police officers ("sure looks like an accident to me"), scheming and naive women, and a plot that is orchestrated by a crooked estate lawyer who (get ready for the surprise!) wants the $3 million estate for himself. The lawyer wants a vagrant, albeit a well-dressed and decent-looking vagrant (everybody wore nice suits in those days), to serve as an impostor for a missing millionaire because (I think although it's not clear) he wants to suspend the distribution of the estate to its rightful heirs at the end of the 7-year missing period. The impostor has a close physical resemblance to the missing millionaire.

The impostor "returns" to his mansion and the not-too-discerning wife, and his presumed brother and sister-in-law, accept him as their missing husband / brother even though he inadequately explains where he's been for 7 years. The wife accepts him completely but his sister-in-law eventually observes a physical discrepancy, i.e., no childhood scar. But I wonder if he and his "wife" resumed intimate relations, because I'm reminded of a similar plot in the 1993 Kevin Kline-Sigourney Weaver film "Dave" where a humble small businessman, who closely resembles the President, is cajoled into becoming an impostor for the President who has just suffered a stroke which is hidden from the public. But the First Lady (Sigourney) catches on when she sees him taking a shower in the living quarters of the White House; we see her scanning the naked body of Kevin Kline down to his midsection and then slightly below, and then, shower over, she confronts him: "You're not my husband!" Couldn't have done that back in 1950!

As others have remarked, this film is a crime noir sandwiched around a family melodrama. It's also, as part of the melodrama, about a separated wife and mother striving to live independently and do the best for her family. I think the filmmakers do a good job of melding, mostly successfully, the two aspects of the film. It re-energized Joan Crawford's career and was an early and successful (by virtue of its box office) Hollywood entrant into the film noir genre.

While "Mildred Pierce" the film is an admirable effort at filmmaking, Mildred Pierce the character leaves a lot to be desired. Many reviewers, here and elsewhere, have expressed admiration for her character as she began her "independence" by humbly working as a waitress and then proceeding to build a sizable business of successful restaurants, treating her customers with courtesy and respect, all the while providing generously for her remaining daughter. But the way I see it, Mildred Pierce: (1) very possibly drove her husband into the arms of the neighbor, Ms. Biederhof, by focusing most of her attention on her daughters at the expense of her husband, (2) engaged in a loveless marriage with a dissolute member of the "leisure class" just so she could provide an expensive mansion for her snobby daughter to entertain her high class friends, (3) despite her obvious marketing and customer-friendly skills she so financially mismanaged her restaurant business by diverting funds from the business to the aims and wishes of her daughter and her "husband," the former a social climber, and the latter aspiring to remain in the class within which he was born, and most unforgivably, (4) concealing a murder and attempting to frame Wally, an irritating business advisor, for the murder.

I recently attended a one-night film course on Mildred Piece, and one item of discussion was weather the spoiled daughter Veda was a "bad seed" or ultimately corrupted, i.e., excessively spoiled, by Mildred. The younger daughter, albeit age 10, seemed normal, but Veda as an adolescent was already mocking her mother for provincial tastes. I lay the blame squarely on Mildred for her daughter's over-the-top selfishness. In addition, there's another aspect to this film that provides a kind of subtext to the plot and the characters, and that's the issue of social class. Mildred's successful entrepreneurship, while admired by Wally and her friends, was embarrassing to her daughter because it meant she still had to "work" which she viewed as "getting grease on your hands." She admired the polo-playing husband of her mother because he didn't have to work and had a life of leisure, albeit with diminishing financial resources. The husband himself relished his life style and evinced an air of social superiority over those destined to work, or eager to create something, e.g., a successful business enterprise.

So says Freud to C. S. Lewis in this cerebral film depicting a hypothetical meeting in 1939 London between two intellectual giants of the 20th century. They debate, or more accurately, cursorily discuss profound issues like the existence of pain, the necessity of free will, the relationship between God and Satan, the nature of joy and the nature of sin. In this discussion, Freud's atheism is expressed much more aggressively (perhaps animated by his severe cancer-caused pain which has him continually seeking morphine), and Lewis is portrayed as more deferential to the famous psychoanalyst. While the historical Lewis was no slouch in forcefully arguing his positions (see his arguments in the Oxford Socratic Club), he hadn't acquired his famous reputation in 1939, the year of this imagined dialogue of two minds.

I give the filmmakers credit for mounting this project knowing that the audience for such a thoughtful film is limited, but as hinted earlier the issues are two broad and deep for such a cursory treatment; nevertheless, I found the film deeply absorbing. Since it's about 90% dialogue, mostly confined to a single home, it's more suited to the theatre (from which, indeed, it's derived), but the film medium offers the ability to show flashbacks of the two men's lives which shaped their current personalities and lives. The meeting at Freud's home seems to be initiated by Lewis's seldom-read allegorical "Pilgrim's Regress" where the main character John is seeking a "beautiful island" (a metaphor for union with the divine?) and Lewis creates a character "Sigismund Enlightenment" (a proxy for Freud) who tells John: "there is nowhere to escape to....wishing for your island doesn't make it real." And this is indeed Freud's view of religion as a form of wish fulfillment that's essentially an illusion. Lewis doesn't see it as wish fulfillment but as a deep yearning that reflects an Ideal that we weren't made for this world.

I believe there was a part in their dialogue where the scientist in Freud criticizes Lewis and his Inklings (a literary group) for writing "fantasies." Lewis doesn't say it in the film but his famous quote might have been a good rejoinder: "reason is the organ of truth but imagination is the organ of meaning." All in all, this film was a worthy effort in bringing critical ideas and conceptions out of books and plays and to a film audience.