Noir Watch: The Damned Don't Cry (1950)

Watched:  04/08/2024

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Vincent Sherman

Selection:  Me

First:  The Damned Don't Cry (1950) is an amazing, pulpy-perfect name for a movie.  I am not sure more movies need to do this in this age, but The Dead Don't Hurt coming soon as a Western is a pretty dang solid name, too.  Marketers, challenge yourself when selling movies!  

Criterion Channel currently has a series going on featuring noir films made in 1950 entitled "Peak Noir", and I'm going to catch all of them I haven't seen.  Honestly, shoving Joan Crawford into a movie from this series was going to get me to prioritize it, so here we are. 

Crawford plays a mother to a young child, married to a roughneck and living with her parents in near poverty.  After the tragic death of her child on a bike they couldn't afford, she splits and heads for New York.  She moves swiftly into modelling for a dress-maker, and finds it has a side-hustle that's not quite prostitution, but adjacent.  Meeting a harmless CPA, she sees a way out, and gets him better gigs working for shady operations (and I think it's assumed, they're friendly).  However, this means she meets a 50's-style syndicate boss, and she trades up to become his kept woman.  

She learns to have a taste for the finer things, and believes he may leave his wife for her when he sends her to Palm Springs to find out what's going on with his volatile West Coast head, played by Signal Watch fave, Steve Cochran.  Crawford falls for Cochran - maybe, sorta - but at least doesn't want him murdered because of her actions.  When her boyfriend shows up.  

We have a framing device of starting at the end, so we're constantly working our way back to the lowly state in which we meet Crawford.  And I don't hate that, but it does telegraph a bit.

The story has a nice Warner Bros. slickness to the production.  Great sets, great dresses, one hat that's so bad it's a plot point, and some amazing dialog sprinkled throughout.  If I was a writer, I'd be studying that dialog for some of the gems they drop, because movies can't swing that anymore.  

"This isn't a party you can leave when you get bored. We could have left, you and I, a long time ago. We were only guests then. But we stayed too late."

That's some good stuff, man.

I wouldn't say the movie drags, and I'm not even sure it's as predictable as I want to say it is - the push of Crawford's character to Palm Springs is cold and as surprising to the audience as Joan.  The back 1/4th or 1/5th of the movie speeds up into straight gangster-stuff that I quite liked.  But the character is a protagonist, not a hero or particularly likable.  If the studio was counting on Crawford simply being innately likable, I mean, maybe, to me (opinions in this house vary as to Crawford's innate appeal).  But like a lot of noir - going back to Double Indemnity - the leads aren't heroes and they may be awful people.  So you better come loaded with style, charm and some great dialog.

I think television does a better job in 2024 of tracking the stumbling ascent of people from poor conditions to the top.  I'm not sure what movies, portraying people in modern times, really want to do this, but I don't think there's any avoidance by audiences.  I just can't think of a movie that wasn't a biopic that tracked someone from rags to riches in a while.  If you know one, drop it in the comments.

In some ways, this reminded me of the Stanwyck movie Baby Face from 1933, but it's also nowhere near the only movie that's about a woman moving through a series of lovers, each giving her something she thinks she needs - but none of those things are love (and then there's a downfall).  I made sure to check in with Jamie after the movie, and she rightly pointed out that the movie doesn't necessarily give you anyone to root for - which was part of why it reminded me of Baby Face.   It's a noir cautionary tale about the trap of the endless pursuit of wealth and comfort.  Sort of.  It surely isn't the first - you can see some great melodrama about that in Imitation of Life or other movies.  And I feel like it's a peculiarity of movies aimed at women until, really, the 1970's or maybe beyond.  

There's something a bit insidious and patronizing about "ladies, if you want things, or go for men above your station, bad things will happen".  And, which honestly feels antithetical to the Hollywood ethos of making stars out of whomever showed up and had the goods (see: the career of one Joan Crawford).  

But I also think it's interesting to see what Crawford was offered/ interested in/ carried as a star here in her mid-40's.  She's not settling in to play supporting roles, the scripts and photography all insist she's desirable to men, and sexually active, when women in their 40's and 50's were often playing mothers (or even grandmothers) in this era.  You can't help but wonder about her actual hard-scrabble upbringing as she's kicking off the dirt of this place at the beginning of the movie, and she's not afraid to get slapped around on screen in the final reel.  

But like Bette Davis, she also knew the way to make people remember you is to play enough roles that don't just end on a happy note.  

I didn't hate the movie.  It did some things I really liked, and I might watch it again one day if I'm back on a Crawford-binge.  But I also am not sure I can shake the feeling there could have been a bit more to it, maybe if they'd stacked it with a few more Steve Cochranes.