Narrative-Mildred Pierce

The story itself, as the soul of films, has always been most audiences’ focus and concentration. As a typical melodrama of Hollywood in 1940s, the narrating way of this film ‘Mildred Pierce’(Michael Curtiz, 1945) is significantly appealing to viewers and has revealed how crucial the narrative could shape and organize a film. In this blog, I would like to analyze by what means the director tells a story, how the story has been structured, and the reflection on Vladimir Propp’s Roles.

By what means

In this part I would mainly talk about the support of mise-en-scène when narrating. In order to match and satisfy the cliffhanger at the very first beginning, the first setting that Monty was murdered is focusing on a mirror in front of him, there is nothing inside but we can hear the door shut, which is quite eye-catching and leave loads of information and mystery for the next narration. The next outdoors scene, as an implicity, indicates so clear that Mildred had something related to the murder(as well as introduced the main character). With these two symbolic and implicit settings supported by using mise-en-scene, audiences would build a system of the story which the director was about to reveal if it matches soon.

  (Mirror and bullets)

In what order (structure)

To understand the theory of narrative, here is the definition: A way of organizing spatial and temporal data into a cause-effect chain of events with a beginning, middle and end that embodies a judgment about the nature of events (Branston, Stafford: 2006, p.42). As we can see from ‘Mildred Pierce’, the director broke down the general narrating order, instead he used flashback to restructured the beginning, middle and the end, which in my view he let the main character to disrupt the equilibrium at the very first beginning, in order to achieve the cliffhanger as I mentioned above. After the disruption, the story flashes back to narrate that how Mildred got succeeded and how her daughter became a typical femme fatale day by day. This very part starting as a state of equilibrium but slowly getting unbalanced should have been at the beginning of the film, but doing opposite could help audiences themselves to rebuild the system that they had already. And finally the equilibrium has been reinstated after the real murderer was found out.

(Her performance as a part of breaking equilibrium)

Vladimir Propp’s Roles

At last, let’s have a look on how Propp’s theory can be reflected on ‘Mildred Pierce’. Mildred herself was obviously usurped a lot by her daughter Veda(a villain) as a hero, but meanwhile Wally was not a 100% donor because of his greed, Bert as the princess’s father also didn’t reward Mildred totally. Monty was more like a false hero since he relied on her wealth and betrayed her eventually. Additionally, Ida was the helper while Mildred’s younger daughter was the princess as far as i am concerned.

(Propp’s role: The villain, the false hero and the hero)(from left to right)

Conclusion

‘Mildred Pierce’ uses a huge amount of film language to finish a classical non-linear narrative to innovate and break through the traditional narrating way, and being inspired by this kind of structure in some way many films from this after explored more on this irregular narrative. Also the film supported basic character narration by obeying the Propp’s theory more or less.