Feel free to add any other "noir Moms" that come to mind.
The perfect Mother’s Day noir?
Posted by Don Malcolm on 5/12/2019, 9:00 am
Is it MILDRED PIERCE, as extolled by Alan Rode in his press quotes for the Art Lyons Palm Springs noir fest? Long-suffering Joan has more in common with mothers in straight-out melodrama were it not for her capitalist mania for success, perhaps the first of her kind, the woman who “wants to have it all.”
Or is it, as Eddie M. suggests, WHITE HEAT, where Margaret Wycherley manages to raise the most psychotic “mama’s boy” in noir (James Cagney as Cody Jarrett)? “Momism” in America, as famously critiqued by Philip Wylie, may well have its most harrowing portrayal here.
I don’t get the impression that Mother’s Day (second Sunday in May) has beckne a world-wide holiday, but for my money the best noir for such a day is a film with not one, but TWO highly cautionary maternal figures: VOICI LE TEMPS DES ASSASSINS, where Lucienne Bogaert and Germaine Kerjean show motherhood as an instrument for repression and revenge.
But surely there are other examples, even in a universe where motherhood is quite often the furthest thing from a woman’s mind. (After all, who really wants stretch marks?) Feel free to list other notable mothers in noir right here.
Oh, yes: Happy Mother’s Day to ALL you mothers out there!! :-)
Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?
Posted by Livius on 5/13/2019, 1:28 am, in reply to "The perfect Mother’s Day noir?"
I immediately though of both Joan Bennett in The Reckless Moment and Gale Sondergaard in Christmas Holiday. And while it may be a little late in the day, Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate.
Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?
Posted by Don Malcolm on 5/13/2019, 4:30 am, in reply to "Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?"
Great choices, Colin—that gives us two good mothers and five very bad mothers to choose from.
Another prominent mother is Mary Astor as Fritzi Haller, casino owner and mother of Liz Scott in DESERT FURY.
Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?
Posted by Dan Hodges on 5/13/2019, 10:31 am, in reply to "Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?"
Three of film noirs' mothers in the most intense mother-child relationships are in four films:
Gin Sling (Oma Munson) shoots dead her daughter, Poppy (Gene Tierney), in The Shanghai Gesture (1941).
Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore) shoots dead her son, Professor Warren (George Brent), to save the life of the mute housekeeper, Helen (Dorothy McGuire), in The Spiral Staircase (1946).
Crack marksman, Jill Lawrence (Edna Best), shoots dead the kidnapper Abbott (Peter Lorre) to save the life of her daughter, Betty (Nova Pilbeam), in Hitchcock's first The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).
Pop-star singer, Jo Conway McKenna (Doris Day), sings the (actual) hit, Que Sera Sera, to save the life of her young son, Hank (Christopher Olsen), in Hitch's remake (1956).
Re: The perfect Mother’s Day noir?
Posted by Solomon on 5/13/2019, 12:36 pm, in reply to "The perfect Mother’s Day noir?"
May we sneak in Hitchcock?
Marnie's mother, Louise Latham, had an outsize effect on Tippi Hedren.
There's the spirit and corpse of Anthony Perkins' mom in Psycho.
Notable but not noir moms include Jessica Tandy, very protective of her son in The Birds, and then we have Cary Grant's mom (Jessie Royce Landis) in North by Northwest.
Joan Crawford had a tough time with her daughter Diane Baker in the late Strait-Jacket.
Wait, there's Sal Mineo's mother in Teddy Bear. She did a job on him.
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