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Mother’s Day this year was unlike any other — at least at Harvard. The Harvard Film Archive did not screen happy, romantic, or even heartwarming movies. Rather, it screened a film series exploring the darker side of being a mother. The oldest movie on view, “Mildred Pierce” (1945), explores the lengths to which a mother would go in order to protect her children.

The film follows Mildred, a businessperson whose second husband has been murdered. Mildred relates her story to the police when she is taken in for questioning at the beginning of the film. Her narrative begins with a divorce from her cheating and unemployed husband. Separated from him, she commits herself solely to keeping her children happy and giving them the nice things they had grown to enjoy before their father left. Although first taking a job as a waitress, Mildred realizes the embarrassment her position will cause her eldest daughter, Veda, and decides to start a restaurant business. Through this endeavor, she meets Monty Beragon, her future second husband. When her younger daughter, Kay, suddenly dies of pneumonia, Mildred’s desire to keep Veda happy only grows. Even as the insatiability of Veda’s desire for wealth and status becomes clearer, Mildred remains devoted to her daughter, eventually trying to take the blame for the murder of Monty when Veda is revealed to have killed him.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and with music by Max Steiner — who famously composed the scores from “Gone With the Wind” (1939) and “Casablanca” (1942) — the film’s use of flashbacks, shadowy lighting, and suspenseful music makes “Mildred Pierce” an unquestionable masterpiece in storytelling. As moviegoers Joe Klompus and Nell Beram observed, the film’s intricacies are hard to remember — every time a person watches it, the film seems to take on a new experience.

Klompus marvelled that he could “watch the original print” rather than a digitized copy. While both Klompus and Beram had seen the movie before, Beram emphasized that the plot’s complexity served to underline the timeless quality of the film.

For a first-time viewer, “Mildred Pierce” certainly has much to offer, especially in relation to the theme of the festival, which centered on alternative visions of motherhood. As the plot becomes darker, audiences are left wondering how far a mother would go to satisfy her child. When Veda is revealed to be the murderer, the viewer’s heart is shattered as much as Mildred’s. With nothing hurting her but herself, Veda is taken away, and Mildred is left alone with a failing business and hardly a will to live.

But why does Mildred not see her relationship with Veda — marked by giving so much and not receiving any love in return — as an issue? One answer, as Beram pointed out, may lie in Mildred’s backstory. The film briefly relates to the audience that Mildred was raised by a single mother who took in washing for a living. The absence of her father and the nature of the relationship she had with her mother are not explained. Nevertheless, these omissions cast Mildred’s behavior as a response to her upbringing — her childhood was not ideal, and her children should not need to suffer the same fate. Interestingly, the beginning of the movie follows almost exactly the path of Mildred’s own mother: Her husband leaves and she takes a job as a waitress in order to pay her bills. Mildred, however, is not satisfied with this kind of life for her children — she understands her eldest daughter’s needs more, but cannot comprehend that forcing her to live a less privileged life may, in fact, be better for her.

Thus, “Mildred Pierce” raises many questions about the distinction between good and bad parenting. While Mildred comes across at first as a mother who is passionately devoted to her children, it is clear by the end of the film that her parenting has failed. Stark as the result of this overindulgence might be, is Mildred’s behavior so far different from what can be seen in the modern day?

With two kids of her own, Beram said that she is aware of “a lot of very indulgent parents,” though they would not go to such extremes.

Another moviegoer, Peter Gaccione said, “I’m not so sure it’s an alternative version,” discussing Mildred’s behavior in the film. He agreed with Beram that Mildred went too far.

Gaccione, however, did not see mothers behaving the same way today as the character Mildred Pierce.

“There’s more enlightenment for women,” specifically in the wake of the feminist movement of the 1970s, said Gaccione.

There is no doubt that mothers like Mildred still exist. The businessperson who Beram saw Mildred Pierce as is far more common today than in 1945. “Mildred Pierce” is clearly a warning, and even though many seem to believe that a parent would go as far as Mildred did, whether the empowerment of women in the past 50 years has led them to be more like her or less is an open question. How did a simple, devoted mother transform into such an indulgent one? Did Mildred make one major mistake, or is her path to “motherly failure” more of a gradual one?