Criterion Pierce

Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz. Its iconic performance by Joan Crawford as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford’s career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by the bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent’s tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain’s rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.

In sunny Florence, Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), a young and clever upper-class Englishwoman, meets George Emerson (Julian Sands), a young and uninhibited Englishman. While taking a walk together, he unexpectedly kisses her. What she experiences during that short moment while his lips touch her lips later on forces her to begin suspecting that she might have fallen in love with him.