1. ‘Stella Dallas’ (1937)
Sometimes the strongest mother-daughter relationships also are the most contentious, and few movies nail that dynamic, the simultaneous clashing and melding of two bright minds and strong wills, as this classic ‘80s James L. Brooks melodrama does. Shirley MacLaine’s widowed Aurora Greenway is as singular a woman as her only daughter, Emma (Debra Winger), and she supports and disapproves in equal measure as her girl wends her way through a messy life of marriage, child-rearing, infidelity and separation. But it’s when Emma receives a cancer diagnosis that MacLaine really earns that best-actress Oscar, striking everything in her path with all the ferocity of a grizzly bear protecting her cub.
3. ‘Bambi’ (1942)
seen Roman Polanski’s intense, psychological-horror film about a pregnant woman who realizes that fear — but loves her baby no less. The film is a master class of claustrophobic paranoia as willowy Mia Farrow, with her big eyes and pixie-cut hair, begins to suspect that something is amiss in her New York City apartment. Never has maternal instinct been a more terrifying force than in this film’s final moments.
Olive Higgins Prouty’s novel has been adapted for film three times (most recently as 1990s “Stella,” starring Bette Midler). But it was best realized as a three-hanky melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck as a coarse, socialladder-climbing woman who marries far above her station. The marriage lasts long enough to produce a daughter, Laurel. As Laurel comes of age in a deeply class-conscious America, Stella’s breeding and social status become a hindrance to her happiness, a situation that resonated deeply with Depression-era audiences. There are few portraits of a mother’s love as devastating as this film’s final moments, as the wedding music swells and Stella, out in the rain with tears in her eyes, looks in on her daughter’s happiness from the outside.
Moms you’d hate to have
David Michod’s Australian crime drama (and debut film) was one of the best movies to come out that year (and certainly represents the best use of the Air Supply song “All Out of Love” to inspire goose bumps of dread). A teenager named J loses his mother to a heroin overdose and moves in with his estranged grandmother, Smurf, the bloodchilling matriarch (played by Oscar-nominated Jacki Weaver) of a Melbourne crime family whose grown sons dote on her with a fealty that borders on incestuousness. They’re like trailer-park Coreleones.
3. ‘Cinderella’ (1950)
The evil stepmother from “Cinderella” has been giving a bad name to stepmothers everywhere at least since Charles Perrault set quill to paper in the 17th century. It does take a special kind of evil to force your dead husband’s orphaned daughter to do all your housework and mercilessly mock her efforts to go to the Prince Charming’s ball. Just a little kindness, and Cinderella would have set her and her daughters up for life in Charming’s castle. But you can’t expect much from a woman who would name her cat Lucifer.
2. ‘Carrie’ (1976)