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By
NICK ZEGARAC
"The Damned Don't Cry"
(1950) is really six different Joan Crawford
movies all rolled into one, with a moral ambiguity
that must have left the censors blushing. It stars
Crawford as Lorna Hansen Forbes, a socialite who
has been leading a conflicted double life that is
about to catch up to her. When the body of bad
boy, Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran) turns up, Lorna's
romantic connection is immediately investigated by
the police. However, not before Lorna vanishes
into thin air. This disappearance does indeed
present a grave problem for the investigation,
because it seems that Lorna Hansen Forbes never
existed before she met Nick Prenta.
The police's confusion, of course, touches off a
long flashback in which Lorna (previously known as
Ethel Whitehead) is shown making the best of her
impoverished marriage to Jim (Morris Ankrum) -- an
unhappy set of circumstances fraught with
anti-climactic sterility. However, the marriage,
like Ethel herself, is doomed to tragedy. With
nothing more than self-determination, Ethel/Lorna
embarks upon a lucrative career as a backstabbing,
social climbing vixen. She uses men like
disposable Kleenex to get where she wants to go.
Eventually her bedroom prowess throws her into the
arms of Nick, positioning Lorna as the lady behind
a thug running one of the most notorious
nationwide crime syndicates.
Director Vincent Sherman had his own notorious
romantic goings on with Crawford while shooting
this film and that hot-blooded backstage tryst
shows up on the screen. Both the actress and her
performance have been oxygenated and primed to
explode, with dilated twists and turns oozing from
every facet of Gertrude Walker's lurid screenplay.
But for all its torrid sexiness and slippery
sinful attitudes toward a woman's place in a world
of ravenous male desire, "The Damned Don't Cry"
comes across as something of a convoluted cropper.
Its initial film noir base is subverted in
melodrama that dissolves into moments of subtle
comedy, before bouncing into the sphere of over
the top camp and kitsch. Though Crawford keeps all
of these elements at bay, while central to her
performance, she's really been thrown into the
deep end of the pool here so to speak,
artistically compromised in a very inarticulate
bit of business that has her doing everything but
card tricks and standing on her head in a bikini
-- though there is little doubt she would have
done even this if the screenplay had commanded it.
Another near perfect transfer from Warner Brothers
greets on this DVD. Gray scale is finely wrought
with detail, solid blacks, clean whites and a
minimal amount of film grain. There's no hint of
edge enhancement for a very smooth picture that
will surely please. The audio is mono as expected
but very nicely cleaned up. Extras include a "Reel
and Real" featurette analysis of the Crawford
style of acting, as well as an audio commentary by
director, Sherman -- who really is more into
raking smut about his star/lover than recollecting
the film in a clinical and analytical way. Not
that his commentary isn't interesting. But it does
tend to run more toward tabloid headlining than
serious audio track. |
