A hybrid of film noir and the women's picture, MILDRED PIERCE allowed Joan Crawford, no longer an ingénue, to reinvent herself for the 1940s as the independent, career-oriented woman suffering in great luxury. It worked best here, winning her an Academy Award for Best Actress (which the "ill" Crawford accepted in bed). This remarkable story - about a housewife who turns waitress and later becomes a successful restaurant owner, but earns the enmity of her spiteful daughter when the two compete for the love of a playboy - was beautifully adapted for the screen by Ranald MacDougall and Catherine Turney, capturing the intensity of James M. Cain's novel. DIR Michael Curtiz; SCR Ranald MacDougall, from the novel by James M. Cain; PROD Jerry Wald. U.S., 1945, b&w, 111 min. NOT RATED