Mildred Pierce: “It’s awful, cheap material. I can tell by the smell.”

The film noir world of Mildred Pierce (1945) is punctuated by shadows and scents. For manipulative, status-seeking Veda, scent is telling. It gives away the cheap material of her dress and evokes the working-class life of "pies" and "kitchens" she has come to hate, where everything "smells of grease."