The abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen queen Joan Crawford, is depicted.
Marking the 40th anniversary of its initial release comes “Mommie Dearest” on Blu-ray for the first time, restored and packed with special features. Despite being panned by critics, the film was a commercial success, and it’s not hard to see why. Exploits of the rich and famous always make for good viewing, as does a glimpse into the plumbing of the Hollywood movie machine. Perhaps also part of the appeal is the prurient element about how a controversial actress may have treated her adopted daughter behind closed doors.
Faye Dunaway makes an unforgettable impression as Joan Crawford. The movie opens with Crawford’s morning ritual during a shoot. After rising at four in the morning, she fastidiously applies hot, soapy facial scrubs, followed by immersing her face into a mixture of ice cubes and moisturizing oil, and then topping everything off with strong, freshly-brewed coffee. Obviously, Joan is no slouch, as she takes her hard-earned stardom very seriously as exhibited by a peerless work ethic.
Left to her own devices, Crawford might have been best remembered for her dedication to the craft of acting as evidenced by her many formidable performances. Instead, her decision to adopt children now mars that legacy. Since Crawford could not legally adopt in California due to two previous divorces, she worked through a broker in Nevada to obtain a child birthed by an unmarried teenager – with unfortunate consequences in the aftermath.
Mara Hobel plays a young Christina and does a fine job of silently criticizing her mother’s erratic and punitive retributions masked as discipline. It’s as if Joan seeks to impose her troubled childhood on Christina in order to make her strong – sort of a female version of the famous Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue.”
Joan has weathered tough times in her life and doesn’t want anyone to forget it – least of all Christina. The long, envious looks Joan sears into her adopted daughter leave little to the imagination. The unbridled jealousy exhibited by Joan comports with complaints from other children regarding their famous parents.
So many of the scenes are iconic and unforgettable. Joan savagely cutting off Christina’s hair as punishment for play-acting, screaming about a wire hanger in the closet, slashing shrubs in the middle of the night dressed in a sequin gown – all indicative of frustration, insecurity, and deep-seated inner anger boiling just below the surface, ready to explode at any moment, for any reason. If even only some of the incidents depicted in the book and film are true, Joan Crawford was a severely disturbed woman.
Steve Forest plays a fictional romantic interest and friend, Greg Savitt, who is initially enthralled with Crawford but eventually driven away by her frantic outbursts and baseless accusations. His repeated attempts to inject reason into the screaming matches come to no avail.
In addition to the wonderful set design and period attire, one of the strongest aspects of the film is the peek into behind-the-scenes Hollywood politics. Howard Da Silva provides a perfect fit as L.B. Mayer, the ruthless MGM studio boss interested in films and actors only as far as they are commercially viable. At Perino’s, he insists that Crawford and Savitt join him for dinner to impress New York bankers – even though the couple already has their own table. His eyes make clear that it’s not a request.
There is so much unspoken tension in “Mommie Dearest,” it’s hard to know whether to admire the ability of the actors to convey meaning without words, or simply cringe at the uneasiness infusing such moments. When Joan reluctantly concedes to let Christina keep more than one of the birthday presents that would otherwise have gone to orphaned children, the silence is deafening.
Diana Scarwid as an adult Christina appears after years in a boarding school. Upon returning home, Christina remains as defiant as ever, so Joan quickly and icily dispatches her off to a convent as further punishment. Even in later life, Joan still seeks to exert her control. When Christina is hospitalized for an ovarian cyst, Joan does a creepy stand-in for her on a soap opera, despite the glaring age difference between the two actresses.
Christina Crawford was criticized for publishing the book after her mother’s death, but it has become apparent in recent years – if not long before – that celebrities with power and influence retain an unfair advantage in a public feud. Who knows what wrath Joan might have unleashed on Christina if she had had the opportunity to read the contents of the memoir while still alive? As Christina says to her younger also-adopted brother years earlier when Savitt leaves, after which Joan cuts him out of all the photos in the house, “If she doesn’t love you, she can make you disappear.”
Perhaps the biggest problem with the adaptation is that Joan Crawford is made to appear soulless, a shell of human – almost like a poorly drawn one-dimensional villain in a B-movie. The best bad guys are likable, and the Crawford depicted here is nothing less than detestable. Hemmingway once said that as a writer, one must not judge but rather strive for understanding. “Mommie Dearest” fails dismally in that regard, clearly with an ax to grind.
At the end of the day, the film comes off as a series of selected vignettes, a subset of a much larger and richer narrative that could have been developed, perhaps by using other source material. In fact, the screenplay is reminiscent of exchanges between Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), Kirk Douglas (Dean O’Gorman), and Otto Preminger (Christian Berkel) in the underrated biopic “Trumbo,” as the trio banters about a novel in need of screen adaptation. To paraphrase, “It’s very nearly a perfect piece of shit – but there’s a good story in there somewhere.”
Now available on a newly Restored 40th Anniversary Blu-ray
