Bibliographie
Brooks, Peter, L’imagination mélodramatique, Balzac, Henry James, le mélodrame et le mode de l’excès, Paris, Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2010.
Cain, James M., Mildred Pierce, trad. Sabine Berritz, Paris, Gallimard, 1950.
Campion, Benjamin, Le concept HBO : élever la série télévisée au rang d’art, Tours, Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, 2018.
Cook, Pam, « Duplicity in Mildred Pierce », in Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, Londres, BFI, 1998, p. 69-80.
Cook, Pam, « Beyond adaptation: mirrors, memory and melodrama in Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce », Screen, vol. 54, n°3, 2013, p. 378-387.
Corber, Robert J., « Joan Crawford Padded Shoulders: Female Masculinity in Mildred Pierce », Camera Obscura, vol. 21, n°2, 2006, p. 1-31.
Dyer, Richard, Stars, Londres, BFI, [1979] 1998.
Esquenazi, Jean-Pierre, Les Séries télévisées. L’avenir du cinéma ?, Paris, Armand Colin, 2014.
Guillén, Michael, « HBO: Mildred Pierce—The Evening Class Interview with Todd Haynes » [2011], in Todd Haynes: Interviews, ed. Julia Leyda, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, p. 177-184.
Hastie, Amelie, « Sundays with Mildred », Film Quartely, Vol. 65, n°1, 2011, p. 25-33.
Keil, Charlie, « Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett: the performance is the star », in Shining in Shadows Movie Stars of the 2000s, ed. Murray Pomerance, Rutgers University Press, 2012, p. 182-199.
King, Barry « Articulating Stardom », Screen, n° 26, 1985, p. 26-51.
Letort, Delphine et WELLS-LASSAGNE, Shannon, « Reviewing Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO, 2011) in the Age of Postfeminism », Journal of Popular Film and Television, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2018.1549015, consulté le 14 avril 2021.
Mac Donald, Scott, « From Underground to Multiplex : an Interview with Todd Haynes » [2008], in Todd Haynes : Interviews, ed. Julia Leyda, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, p. 152-169.
McRobbie, Angela. « Postfeminism and Popular Culture. » Feminism Media Culture, vol. 4, n°3, 2004, p. 255–264.
Maury, Cristelle, « Re-representing “The Great American Institution that Never Gets Mentioned on the Fourth of July” : Engaging (Feminist) Theories in Todd Haynes’s miniseries Mildred Pierce (HBO, 2011) », Transatlantica : Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal, n°2, 2017, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/9799, consulté le 20 mai 2021.
Moine, Raphaëlle, « En français dans le texte : les acteurs français dans les remakes hollywoodiens de films français depuis les années 1980 », in L’Acteur de cinéma : approches plurielles, dir. Vincent Amiel, Jacqueline Nacache, Geneviève Sellier & Christian Viviani, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007, p. 233-248.
Nacache, Jacqueline, L’acteur de cinéma, Paris, Armand Colin, 2005.
Naremore, James, Acteurs : le jeu de l’acteur de cinéma, trad. Christian Viviani, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014.
Redmond, Sean, « The Whiteness of Stars: Looking at Kate Winslet’s Unruly White Body », in Stardom and Celebrity : a Reader, éd. Sean Redmond et Su Holmes, Los Angeles/Londres/ New Delhi/Singapour, Sage Publications, 2007, p. 263-274.
Rorke, Robert, « Kate Winslet takes on Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce », New York Post, 27 mars 2011, https://nypost.com/2011/03/27/kate-winslet-takes-on-joan-crawford-in-mildred-pierce/, consulté le 26 mai 2021.
Straayer, Chris, « Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Différance », in Women in Film Noir, ed. Ann Kaplan, BFI, 2001, pp. 151–163.
Taubin, Amy, « Daughter Dearest » [2011], in Todd Haynes : Interviews, ed. Julia Leyda, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, p. 185-192.
White, Rob et Jacobs, Amber, « Todd Haynes’s “Mildred Pierce”: A Discussion », Film Quarterly, 23 février 2012, https://filmquarterly.org/2012/02/23/todd-hayness-mildred-pierce-a-discussion/, consulté le 14 avril 2021.
Williams, Linda, « Feminist Film Theory : Mildred Pierce and The Second World War », in Female Spectators: Looking at Film and Television, ed. E. Deidre Pribram, Londres/New York, Verso, 1988, p. 12-30.
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Notes
« The phrase “preeminent actress of her generation” became attached to her with increasing regularity as the decade progressed. », Charlie Keil, « Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett : the performance is the star », Shining in Shadows Movie Stars of the 2000s, ed. Murray Pomerance, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2012, p. 192. Sauf mention contraire, toutes les traductions sont les nôtres.
« (…) her reputation was established in part as a purveyor of “quality” filmmaking […]. », Ibid., p. 185.
« […] here is a ‘Heritage Winslet’, a persona found and built upon in the English heritage pictures and literary adaptations of the mid-1990s, including Sense and Sensibility (Lee, 1996); a Hollywood ‘Titanic’ Winslet, which glamorizes and in part more fully liberates, the repressions of the ‘Heritage’ persona; and an ‘indie’ Winslet, where a rebellious, more explicitly unruly Winslet emerges, apparent in such films as Hideous Kinky (Mackinnon, 1998) and Holy Smoke (Campion, 1999) », Sean Redmond, « The Whiteness of Stars: Looking at Kate Winslet’s Unruly White Body », in Stardom and Celebrity : a Reader, ed. Sean Redmond et Su Holmes, Los Angeles/Londres/ New Delhi/Singapour, Sage Publications, 2007, p. 269 [p. 263-274].
« the structured polysemy of the star’s image », Richard Dyer, Stars, Londres, British Film Institute, [1979] 1998, p. 127.
« Cain travaillait à Hollywood comme scénariste depuis 1932, et Wald l’a approché pour adapter le roman à l’écran. Mais lorsque Wald lui a fait part de ses idées pour transformer l’histoire en un thriller policier, Cain a refusé d’avoir quoi que ce soit à voir avec le projet et a accusé le producteur d’essayer d’exploiter sa réputation littéraire, basée sur les thrillers policiers The Postman Always Rings Twice et Double Indemnity. » (« Cain had been working in Hollywood as a scriptwriter since 1932, and Wald approached him about adapting the novel for the screen. But when Wald told Cain his ideas for transforming the story into a crime thriller, Cain refused to have anything to do with the project and accused the producer of trying to exploit his literary reputation, based as it was on the crime thrillers The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. »), Robert J. Corber, « Joan Crawford Padded Shoulders : Female Masculinity in Mildred Pierce », Camera Obscura, vol. 21, n°2, 2006, p. 9-10.
« Il faut que tu lises le roman de Cain, Mildred Pierce. Il n’avait jamais vu le film, je n’avais jamais lu le livre. » (« Jon said, “You’ve got to read the Cain novel Mildred Pierce.” He had never seen the movie. I had never read the book. »), Amy Taubin, « Daughter Dearest » [2011], in Todd Haynes : Interviews, ed. Julia Leyda, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2014, p. 186 ; « Beaucoup de gens connaissent mieux le film de 1945 avec Crawford que le livre, mais ce film a pris beaucoup de libertés et a transformé en grande partie le roman. Il n’y avait pas de meurtre dans l’histoire originale. » (« More people are better familiar with the 1945 Crawford vehicle than even the novel, but that film took great liberties and changed a great deal of the novel. There was no murder element in the original story. »), Michael Guillén, « HBO: Mildred Pierce—The Evening Class Interview with Todd Haynes » [2011], in Todd Haynes : Interviews, p. 181.
« Television’s serial form is suited to literary adaptation, and the miniseries follows the novel meticulously [...]. », Pam Cook, « Beyond adaptation: mirrors, memory and melodrama in Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce », Screen, n°54/3, 2013, p. 379.
Peter Brooks, L’imagination mélodramatique, Balzac, Henry James, le mélodrame et le mode de l’excès, Paris, Editions Classiques Garnier, 2010.
Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Les Séries télévisées. L’avenir du cinéma ?, Paris, Armand Colin, 2014.
« J’ai décidé de travailler sur ma fascination d’enfance pour Lucy et de me concentrer sur la question de la fessée, même si mes parents ne croyaient pas en la fessée. » (« I decided to work with my childhood fascination with Lucy and to focus on the spanking issue—even though my parents didn’t believe in spanking. »), Scott Mac Donald, « From Underground to Multiplex : an Interview with Todd Haynes » [2008], in Todd Haynes : Interviews, p. 161.
Nous venons d’évoquer la fascination de Haynes pour Lucille Ball. Ce dernier souligne également, dans une interview, la passion qu’il partage avec son amie et productrice Christine Vachon pour les séries HBO The Sopranos et The Wire : « Nous étions de grands consommateurs de séries télévisées comme The Wire et Les Sopranos. Je me laissais prendre par leur nature sérielle. » (« We were great consumers of television series like The Wire and The Sopranos. I’d get caught up in the serial nature of them. »), Taubin, p. 188.
Cet épisode est raconté en détails par Robert J. Corber : « Quand Wald apprit [à Curtiz] qu’il avait montré le script à Crawford sans [sa] permission, Curtiz, célèbre pour son langage fleuri, explosa de colère : “Moi, diriger cette garce caractérielle ! Jamais de la vie ! Elle arrive ici avec ses airs de grande dame et ses foutues épaulettes ! Je ne travaillerai pas avec elle. Sa carrière est finie.” » (« When Wald revealed that he had shown the script to Crawford without the director’s permission, Curtiz, well known for his colorful speech, exploded in rage: “Me direct that temperamental bitch! Not on your goddamn life! She comes over here [from MGM] with her high-hat airs and her goddamn shoulder pads! I won’t work with her. She’s through, washed up.” »), Corber, p. 2.
« I pictured her from my first read of Cain’s description of this woman, who has this intense work ethic and this driven physicality, this determination and force. Mildred is a young mother. She was seventeen when she had Veda, and her age span in the book is from twenty-eight to thirty-seven. Kate Winslet happened to be right in the middle of that span. She has this fierce workhorse aspect, and there’s also an erotic side to her that we’ve seen in certain roles, and her fearlessness. I just felt that she was meant to play this role. And that she would bring something totally different to it than Joan Crawford did. », Taubin, p. 188.
« Tout est ainsi mis en œuvre pour faire advenir non pas ce que l’on pourrait nommer sommairement de la « télévision commerciale », mais de l’art télévisuel : telle est la trace que se destine à laisser HBO dans l’histoire de son médium. », Benjamin Campion, Le concept HBO : élever la série télévisée au rang d’art, Tours, Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, 2018, p. 45.
Amelie Hastie, « Sundays with Mildred », Film Quartely, Vol. 65, n°1, 2011, p. 25.
« Fassbinder’s films have been hugely influential on me and they still amaze and exhaust me. Berlin Alexanderplatz has become interesting to me again in part because I’m just now thinking about doing something in an episodic format, a long, multiple-part piece for television. », Mac Donald, p. 169.
« With Mildred Pierce, I wanted something that felt like a hybrid of the miniseries form and the revisionist feature filmmaking of the seventies, which brought a certain sophistication to classic genres, like the gangster film in The Godfather [1972], the detective film in Chinatown [1974], the horror movie in The Exorcist [1973]. », Taubin, p. 188.
Cook, « Beyond adaptation », p. 384.
Ibid., p. 384-385.
« Un tel écran transparent ressemble beaucoup à notre poste de télévision » (« such a transparent screen is a lot like our television sets. »), Hastie, p. 28.
Jacqueline Nacache, L’Acteur de cinéma, Paris, Armand Colin, 2005, p. 92.
« Amplifying the interest in Winslet’s body image was her propensity for appearing unclothed in films: she had already appeared naked in Jude, and her nudity was key to one of the central tropes of Titanic. », Redmond, p. 184.
« […] a device that impedes knowledge and understanding of the narrative, for example when Monte is murdered. », Cook, « Beyond adaptation », p. 384.
« […] Kate Winslet’s facial resemblance to Joan Crawford, accentuated through makeup […]. », Ibid., p. 382.
Raphaëlle Moine, « En français dans le texte : les acteurs français dans les remakes hollywoodiens de films français depuis les années 1980 », L’Acteur de cinéma : approches plurielles, dir. Vincent Amiel, Jacqueline Nacache, Geneviève Sellier & Christian Viviani, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007, p. 233.
Nacache, p. 88.
« With Crawford performing in her signature cool manner, the film rarely incites us to feel compassion toward her foolish affections. », Hastie, p. 27.
« […] the tenderness with which Mildred is depicted as a result of the collaboration between Haynes and Kate Winslet. », Ibid., p. 27.
« […] we spend a lot of time with her: Mildred appears in every scene of the 330-minute series. », Ibid., p. 33.
« The mini-series format, coupled with a more cinematic emphasis on a singular thread of the narrative (our heroine) rather than the multiple strands of a conventional serial form, allows us the time to care for Mildred. », Ibid., p. 28.
« Winslet’s highly charged, physically expressive performance », Cook, « Beyond adaptation », p. 382.
« All stars are in one way or another exceptional, just as they are all ordinary », Dyer, p. 58.
« [A]n actress whose independent spirit and unruly body will not be constrained within the parameters of idealized whiteness », Redmond, p. 273.
Nous adaptons ici l’expression « perfect fit » de Dyer qui caractérise ainsi les cas où « tous les aspects de l’image d’une star coïncident avec tous les traits d’un personnage » (« In certain cases, all the aspects of a star’s image fit with all the traits of a character. »), Dyer, p. 129.
Esquenazi, p. 149.
Ibid., p. 155.
« [I]t is possible to argue that he has turned Cain’s novel into an explicitly feminist film. In that regard, it is only logical that he would have refused to acknowledge the influence of Curtiz’s film on the miniseries. », Cristelle Maury, « Re-representing “The Great American Institution that Never Gets Mentioned on the Fourth of July” : Engaging (Feminist) Theories in Todd Haynes’s miniseries Mildred Pierce (HBO, 2011) », Transatlantica : Revue d’études américaines. American Studies Journal, n°2, 2017, http://journals.openedition.org/transatlantica/9799, consulté le 20 mai 2021.
Pam Cook, « Duplicity in Mildred Pierce », Women in Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, Londres, The British Film Institute, [1978] 1998, p. 69-80.
« He fully exploits and brings out the feminist potential of Mildred’s story and the enduring aspect of feminist struggles across time by rejecting point by point Curtiz’s film noir adaptation choices as they have been described by feminist scholars, and by systematically taking the opposite direction. », Cristelle Maury, « Re-representing “The Great American Institution that Never Gets Mentioned on the Fourth of July” ».
La description que fait Cain du personnage correspond davantage au physique malléable et relativement peu conventionnel de Winslet – qui n’hésite pas à s’enlaidir pour correspondre au physique d’un personnage, comme celui qu’elle interprète dans The Reader, ou plus récemment, dans la série Mare of Easttown (HBO, 2021) – qu’à l’idéalité de la beauté photogénique et comme figée de Joan Crawford dans le film de 1945 : « Elle était un peu au-dessous de la moyenne, et sa petite taille, ses cheveux blonds mousseux, ses yeux bleus limpides la faisaient paraître beaucoup plus jeune que ses vingt-huit ans. Cependant, son visage manquait de distinction. Elle était, comme on dit, plus « agréable à regarder » que vraiment jolie […]. », James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce, trad. Sabine Berritz, Paris, Gallimard, 1950, p. 31.
James Naremore, Acteurs : le jeu de l’acteur de cinéma, trad. Christian Viviani, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014, p. 294.
« The story of her body size and weight is scripted throughout her career. She has championed the philosophy that women can (should) be big and beautiful and, until recently, she has resisted the media onslaught for her to be ideally thin. », Redmond, p. 272.
C’est ainsi que Sean Redmond caractérise la persona forgée par Kate Winslet dans ses films indépendants : « an “indie” Winslet, where a rebellious, more explicitly unruly Winslet emerges », ibid., p. 269.
Chris Straayer, « Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Différance. », in Women in Film Noir, ed. Ann Kaplan, Londres, BFI, 2001, p. 153.
Angela McRobbie, « Postfeminism and Popular Culture », Feminism Media Culture, vol. 4, n°3, 2004, p. 260.
« Todd Haynes’s camera turns Mildred Pierce into an “orgasmic femme fatale” (…) in the sex scenes that prompt viewers to indulge themselves to watch soft-porn features. In these sequences, the filmmaker clearly gives in to the idea that sex sells on HBO and to the postfeminist mantra, promoting “an uncritical relation to dominant commercially produced sexual representations which actively invoke hostility to assumed feminist positions from the past in order to endorse a new regime of sexual meanings based on female consent, equality, participation and pleasure, free of politics” », Delphine Letort et Shannon Wells-Lassagne, « Reviewing Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO, 2011) in the Age of Postfeminism », Journal of Popular Film and Television, 2019, p. 177-178.
Todd Haynes adapte par exemple assez fidèlement ce passage extrait du roman de Cain, contrairement à Curtiz qui l’élide : « Enfin, brusquement, comme s’il avait résolu un problème difficile, il assena un coup de poing sur le bras de son fauteuil et dit : “Bon Dieu ! Cela exige que je te viole !” Il vint vers Mildred, passa un bras autour d’elle, glissa l’autre sous ses jambes et l’emporta dans la chambre. […] En un éclair, le manteau de brocart fut enlevé et jeté sur le plancher. Elle pensa à sa robe et s’en moqua : elle désira qu’il l’arrache, la mette en lambeaux si cela était nécessaire, mais qu’il la lui enlève. Il ne l’arracha pas, il se battit avec la fermeture éclair, et, pendant quelques secondes, les doigts de Mildred furent sur ceux de Monty, pour l’aider. », M. Cain, p. 269.
« Because of the code, which stated that “sex perversion, or any inference to it, is forbidden » (« the film had to treat Mildred’s desire for Veda even less explicitly than the novel did. »), Corber, p. 7.
Campion, p. 159.
Esquenazi, p. 149.
« Comme les personnages de Crawford à l’époque de la Dépression, Mildred est déterminée à réussir, et son ascension vers le succès reflète celle de Crawford, du moins la façon dont elle a été décrite dans les fan magazines et les communiqués de presse des studios. », (« Like Crawford’s Depression-era characters, Mildred is determined to succeed, and her rise to success mirrors Crawford’s own, at least how it was depicted in fan magazines and studio press releases. »), Corber, p. 5.
Voir le témoignage de Mare Winningham dans l’article de Robert Rorke, « Kate Winslet takes on Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce », New York Post, 27 mars 2011, https://nypost.com/2011/03/27/kate-winslet-takes-on-joan-crawford-in-mildred-pierce/, consulté le 26 mai 2021.
« Kate and I are both massive Top Chef freaks and we visited Tom Colicchio at his house and he gave her instruction on how to separate chickens. […] Tom was incredibly helpful and Kate was relentless about mastering it and doing it right. Kate had to feel that she was doing it right and she approached everything she had to do as the character accordingly. », Guillén, p. 182-183.
« [Mildred] muscles through life by doing things and by transforming frustration into productive work of all kinds: whether she’s baking a pie, or repossessing the family car. But what’s interesting is that’s the way that many actors, including Kate, prepare their role: the externalization of the character through physical tasks and challenges. It’s often just simply practical. », Ibid., p. 182.
Keil, p. 182-199.
« (…) retained their images as actresses first and stars second: the pursuit of acting challenges seemingly guided their selection of roles and informed the media’s coverage of each. », Ibid., p. 183.
« Winslet’s dilemma after Titanic was to demonstrate that she could negotiate the demands that stardom placed on an actress with serious dramatic aspirations. », Ibid., p. 185.
« She approaches her characters with curiosity and determination, with an anatomist’s keenness to discover what makes them tick rather than a narcissist’s desire to refashion them into glibly ‘relatable’ versions of herself. », Ibid., p. 199.
« (…) the process of character representation through impersonation entails that the actor should strive to obliterate his or her sense of identity in order to becomea signifier for the intentionality inscribed in character », Barry King, « Articulating Stardom », Screen, n° 26, 1985, p. 31 [p. 26-51].
« Mildred’s creativity is explicitly associated with production: the actual making of things, the grubby work that Veda so despises. Haynes’s long, sensual takes of Mildred baking, cake-decorating, cooking, cutting up poultry, and his frequent use of close-up shots of her deft hands at work fix her firmly in the realm of honest and wholesome work (the apparently ethically sound face of capitalism). Veda, however, doesn’t produce anything so material and tangible. Her voice, as you say, appears almost like magic, a supernatural enigmatic entity cascading through her from nowhere; Veda’s voice is the surplus par excellence—that rare prize whose value far exceeds the usual psychic or material economy. », Rob White et Amber Jacobs, « Todd Haynes’s “Mildred Pierce”: A Discussion », Film Quarterly, 23 février 2012, https://filmquarterly.org/2012/02/23/todd-hayness-mildred-pierce-a-discussion/, consulté le 14 avril 2021.
Naremore, p. 266.
« [A] rare breed of stardom, predicated on craft », Keil, p. 199.
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