MILDRED PIERCE (1945)

Eighty years ago, Joan Crawford’s career seemed all but over. After making her a star, her first studio of the decade, MGM, had squandered her popularity in a string of disappointing pictures. She left in 1943, signing with Warner Bros. but turning down scripts for two years. That changed with this adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel. Crawford snapped up the role and won an Oscar for playing an ambitious divorcee who builds a restaurant chain to support the daughter (Ann Blyth) who betrays her repeatedly. It has been called Hollywood’s greatest comeback story, which often minimizes all the other good work on the film. Director Michael Curtiz keeps the story tense and moody, a mixture of feminist melodrama and film noir. Cinematographer Ernest Haller shoots the film with a heavy emphasis on dark shadows. The supporting cast includes Eve Arden and Jack Carson for welcome comic relief and oily Zachary Scott in one of his best roles as a wealthy cad.

d. Michael Curtiz, 111m, 35mm nitrate

Print courtesy of Warner Brothers Classics and the BFI National Archive.

Print source: BFI National Archive. 1945 nitrate release print preserved by the BFI National Archive.

The British Film Institute is the UK’s lead organization for film and the moving image. In 2025 the BFI National Archive turns 90 years old. From preserving early silent films on fragile nitrate film prints to collecting contemporary work via the latest digital innovations; from bringing to life unproduced ‘lost’ works through scripts and production sketches, to caring for the stills and posters of familiar cultural touchstones; and from their holdings of small-scale home videos to the most epic of cinematic odysseys, since 1935 the BFI National Archive has been a gateway to the past, present, and future of screen culture. The BFI National Archive at TCM Classic Film Festival this April, celebrating this major milestone, are presenting a number of rare archive film prints (including nitrate), new 35mm prints and restorations from their collection.