Watch The Damned Don't Cry For Free

It is a performances centric movie

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Unfortunately, this movie doesn't stand up to a second viewing. Vincent Sherman's direction fails to hit any high spots and is never more than routine. Admittedly, neither the story nor the dialogue could be described as encouraging. Characters like those played by David Brian (who believes in just shouting his lines) and Kent Smith (who plays his usual soppy, wet and spineless caricature) offer the script no support. The rest of the support cast can likewise be written off. Even ace photographer Ted McCord's work here seems far less gritty than we might expect. True, Joan Crawford shines much as usual. But also true, she has played this sort of character many, many times before. And good old director Sherman gives her a rich share of close-ups. Nevertheless, even Joan's most devoted fans are going to be disappointed that the damned don't cry!

Catch those predatory petroleum pumps in Ethel's (Crawford) backyard. They look like feasting vultures as they bob up and down into the ground. No wonder she wants to get the heck out of poverty row, especially with a tightwad husband and a crabby father. And this being Crawford, we know how she'll do it. Watch her climb up the ladder from cheap model to gambler's moll to phony socialite, chewing up men the whole way. So what if she puts one foot into organized crime in the process. Men do it all the time. No doubt about it, she's a female shark who knows what she wants and gets it. But we sympathize anyway knowing what her past has been like. Yes indeed, this is a Crawford role, in spades.Okay, so maybe dear Joan is a ripe 45, a time when most female stars have drifted into wife and motherhood roles. But she's still got fire in those big liquid eyes, and besides, at her age, she knows the tricks in how to seduce a man. I like the way the screenplay toys with that touchy angle. Then too, it's quite a collection of male stars she works her way through—a smooth David Bryan, a sexy Steve Cochran, a dour Richard Egan. But I especially like the bland Kent Smith whose colorless personality perfectly suits a bookkeeper's role. You might even say that in the end he scores an odd moral victory over the more dashing types.Anyway it's Crawford at the height of her golden period, 1945-1955, when she, almost single-handedly, flew the colors of middle-aged women everywhere. It's also golden age Hollywood, when lush studio hokum is hitting on all eight cylinders.

Trodden upon frump & housewife Crawford takes an opportune moment to abandon her husband and smalltown life for bigger things, Joan quickly slips to the lowest ranks of city life. Learning how to flirt, she becomes a floor-walker/whore at a fashion house, and she toughens up ("Aw shaddup!"). After committing a laundry list of crimes from quasi-hooking, to playing successive boyfriends as suckers, to gangster molling, rise she does.As in the noir 'Clash by Night' (Barbara Stanwyck) a desperate, over-reaching woman who's escaped to the big city, has her butt handed to her. 'Clash by Night' focuses on the period after returning to the small town. The focus here is mostly on the events of the city.As you'd expect from noir; nice photography, day for night, memorable lines... but I fell asleep twice trying to get through it. All the best scenes are in the first 45 minutes. It's supposedly based on a Bugsy Siegal relationship, but that anecdote is probably more compelling than the movie itself. There's better, more evenly paced noirs to watch and you could even see Crawford having more fun in Sudden Fear, which is lower quality but it's more enjoyable.

Joan Crawford revitalized a flagging career when she left MGM and signed with Warner Brothers in the '40s. "The Damned Don't Cry" is just one of the very entertaining films she made for Warners, which include "Mildred Pierce," for which she won an Oscar and "Flamingo Road." The formula usually follows the rags to riches line, something Crawford was very good at indeed.Here, she's Ethel Whitehead, a wife and mother of a young boy who dies in an accident, at which point Ethel takes off seeking money, nice things, and the fun she's never had in life. She soon comes to the attention of a clothes manufacturer who has her model the clothes and encourage the buyers to spend their cash after hours. She rides the coattails of a bland CPA (Kent Smith) into the mob domain of George Castleman (David Brian), who gives her a life she only dreamed of - a society name, expensive digs, great trips, clothes and jewels - and no ring on third finger, left hand. Not that anyone has mentioned if she divorced her first husband (Richard Egan). Castleman, suspicious of Nick Prenta (Steve Cochran) who runs his western territory sends Ethel - now "Lorna Hanson Forbes" out to investigate and inveigle her way into Prenta's life to find out what he's planning. It's then that "Lorna" realizes she's just another thing that Castleman uses.This is a slick, fast-moving noir that is basically all Joan all the time. Surrounded by a strong cast, she's the only real star, and she looks it in her beautiful clothes and jewels. She's at her glamorous best here in 1950, right before she hardened into almost a caricature of herself in the '50s and '60s. I can't agree that Crawford's age (46) gets in the way and that Ava Gardner would have been better. Ethel/Lorna is the type of role at which Joan excelled. It was believable, to me at least, that these men were all attracted to her - her character has guts, intelligence, beauty and sexuality. David Brian is her brutish boyfriend, and the scene where he surprises her out west is quite violent, even by today's standards. Steve Cochran is handsome, boyish, and thug-like as Prenta, and he comes on strong."The Damned Don't Cry" is directed with great spirit by Vincent Sherman and will keep the viewer involved throughout.