Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) opens with a framing narrative—a man is shot in a deserted beach house and the protagonist (Joan Crawford) behaves suspiciously. Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) tells the story of a family about to migrate from their Sea Island home to the mainland, but this story is part of a much greater narrative of African diasporic cultural survival.
Discussion Questions
After watching this clip from Mildred Pierce, consider the question below. Then submit your response.
1. Film noir often separates plot order from story order. How do the opening minutes of Mildred Pierce engage us by withholding key information?
Watch the clip from Daughters of the Dust, then answer the question below.
2. How does the film’s opening layer mythic and individual narratives? How does the nonlinear form work differently than the nonlinear form of film noir?