Product: Too Late for Tears (1949)
Rating: 4.0
Femme Fatale & Greedy Cad Angle for the Loot.
"Too Late for Tears" is an archetypal film noir chock full of noir staples: a brutish tough-talking criminal, a lovely femme fatale, an innocent victim, murder, extortion, and memorable one-liners...all for the love of money. Roy Huggins wrote the screenplay based on own "Saturday Evening Post" serial. Lizabeth Scott reprises the ambitious, manipulative role she had in "Dead Reckoning", but with a more sophisticated character and superior script this time. Dan Duryea is wonderfully slimy and smart-alecky, as always. Often called "the screen's No. 1 heel", Duryea could play a violent jerk like no one else. His delivery of great hard-boiled lines is thoroughly convincing, as is his tendency to smack people around. But it's Duryea's ability to convey self-defeat that impresses me the most. He can evoke sympathy for his devilish characters.Jane and Alan Palmer quarrel on their way to a party one evening. Jane (Lizabeth Scott) wants to go back home, so Alan (Arthur Kennedy) reluctantly turns the car around. As they turn, someone in a passing car throws a bag full of money into their back seat. Alan wants to turn the money over to police, but Jane convinces him to hold onto it temporarily. The next day, an unsavory character named Danny Fuller (Dan Duryea) comes looking for Alan and the money. Jane stalls him, but another stranger has appeared at just the wrong time. A man claiming to be have been Alan's war buddy, Don Blake (Don DeFore), is asking questions and getting friendly with Alan's already suspicious sister Kathy (Kristine Miller).Jane Arnold isn't one of the best-known femmes fatales, but she's one of the most relentless. Her obsessive self-interest doesn't leave room for any sympathy as this spider lady proves too cold-blooded for even career criminal Danny. "You know, tiger, I didn't know they made'em as beautiful as you are, or as smart...or as hard, " he says. Danny and Jane are a conniving, adversarial, sexually charged pair, in stark contrast to the earnest romance of Don Blake and Kathy Palmer. "Too Late for Tears" isn't among the most thematically sophisticated film noirs, but it's not superficial either. The main characters are three-dimensional and terrifically portrayed. Fans of noir will find Dan Duryea's cad and Lizabeth Scott's femme fatale thoroughly entertaining.The DVD (Image Entertainment 2003): This isn't a good print of the film. It is full of white specks and black lines. There are also some crackles in the sound. Worse, there are several splices which cause missing dialogue. The film is enjoyable but, unfortunately, not worth owning in this condition. Bonus features include noir filmographies for 4 members of the cast and crew, "Still and Lobby Cards" displaying 13 still photos from the film and 4 lobby cards, and 2 "documentaries". The documentaries are interviews with author and film noir historian Eddie Muller. Muller's discussions are not in depth but would be interesting to anyone who is new to these actors. In the "Lizabeth Scott Documentary" (5 minutes), Muller talks about Scott's career, her unique qualities, her roles, and the scandal that ended her career. In the "Dan Duryea Documentary" (8 minutes) Muller discusses Dan Duryea's noir career and the "sadistic dandy" persona that made him famous.