Roles In The Noir Double Indemnity And Michael Curtiz's 'Mildred Pierce'?

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It may seem that the male characters in classical cinema are given power and control over female characters, but the relationships between characters in Billy Wilder’s 1944 noir Double Indemnity and Michael Curtiz’s 1945 drama Mildred Pierce are complex and do not conform to specific gender roles. Rather, both of these films feature female characters that are both controllers and the controlled. The characters Mildred Pierce and Phyllis Dietrichson hold both of these roles in their respective films but are inverses of each other: Mildred acts strongly and independently but is actually controlled emotionally and financially by others, while Phyllis is presented as submissive but is the grand manipulator. As such, these two films present different images of the “independent woman,” both of which are destined for failure.
On the surface, it seems like Mildred Pierce undergoes a positive transformation and develops into an independent woman. At the beginning of Mildred’s first narrated flashback, she describes her life as little more than “cooking and washing and having children.” She works as a housewife. Her attire and environment reflect this: her first interaction in the flashback is with her husband in the kitchen with an apron on. Bert’s departure pressures Mildred to enter to workforce to support her family and their wants. Her wardrobe changes to represent this change, also, since she is usually seen in working clothes. She builds the motivation to start her own restaurant and eventually starts her own successful restaurant chain, and once again, her physical appearance changes in that she is dressed in fancy clothes. Once she understands that her marriage with Bert would hurt her financially, she actively seeks a divorce fr...

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...nity and Mildred Pierce have two models of the “independent woman,” but both of them fail in the end. Mildred’s love interest dies and her daughter is sent to prison. Phyllis is murdered by Walter. It would seem that the messages of these films are represented by the failures of these women. Mildred could not escape her maternal instinct as it ruined her life. Phyllis treated people like tools and met a fatal end. “Independence from men,” then, is not the final goal for these women on the road to happiness. These films represent this trait as shallow, since not only do these failures arise, but Mildred and Phyllis never truly escape the “male gaze.” The notions of independence presented in these two films lead to disaster because they are incomplete; “independence from men” is a necessary step, but there is still more that the women in the films need to accomplish.

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