This week Todd Haynes’ mini-series adaptation of James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce begins on HBO. Haynes, who has made paranoia more paranoid (Safe), Glam-rock more glamorous (Velvet Goldmine), quiet desperation both quieter and more desperate (Far From Heaven) and Bob Dylan even more outlandishly mythic (I'm Not There), is a tantalizing choice for adapting America’s foremost apostle of hardbitten and hardboiled fiction. Add the always amazing Kate Winslet in the title role and present it in the rich, measured format of our best, truly and unapologetically adult venue and… shall we just go ahead and engrave those Emmy and Golden Globe statues now?
Cain’s tale of a desperate, competent and fiercely determined mother in the Depression era’s struggle to care for her family and make her own way in the world has been adapted before. Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for the title role in the 1945 feature, but the film strayed significantly from the spare, (what’s that expression about still waters?) source material. I’m hoping that Haynes and company pull off something great with this one.
Mini-series seems to be an under-utilized medium for complex adult fare. I, for one, have always thought that it was the natural choice for doing something like James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet – four short seasons of television that would allow you to really immerse in and explore the fascinating world of underground Los Angeles in the forties as well as letting the complex plots and investigations to role out in a better form than the tired and false-ringing “gun wielding killer divulges how they did it and why” device for condensing employed in Brian De Palma’s Black Dahlia.
I haven’t seen it yet, but the BBC has opted for this route with Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor novels. I see that books 2 and 3, (The Killing of the Tinkers and The Magdalen Martyrs) in that series have now been committed to film. Really interested to see how they’ve been handled.
So, fingers crossed.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
