Product: Too Late for Tears (1949)
Rating: 4.0
It's Too Late Baby, It's Just Too Late.
This is a review for TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949) which was directed by Byron Haskin with a screenplay by Roy Huggins from his magazine serial. TOO LATE FOR TEARS seems tobe a Public Domain film and on the Alpha videocopy that I have there was definitely no technical restoration work done on it. By and large, the print is murky at times but certainly watchable.A nice guy husband and his somewhat touchy wife are on their way to a party when they decide to head back home.As they pass a black sedan a satchel is tossed into their back seat and a moment or two later what looks like another mysterious car is following them which the couple decide to see if they can shake off.After the couple stop and examine the bag they realize that it is thousands of dollars. As the husband insists, money that probably is part of some kind of crime they really don't need to be a part of or even know about.So the husband insists on taking it to the police but because his wife really wants what turns out to be $60,000he keeps stalling, as if to indicate that he's not really sure, either. Eventually the satchel is parked ina train station luggage room and the husband is given a ticket for the bag. As it turns out, the ticket falls into a hole in his raincoat pocket and is stuck in the lining.Eventually a stranger played by Dan Duryea shows up at the apartment and bluffs his way into having the wifelet him search the place where he finds brand new furs and other expensive wardrobe items hidden in a kitchencabinet. So he realizes that the money is being spent, no matter what the wife tells him or the husband.And as the story unfolds, there is a somewhat callous murder commited on one of the three principals,an old WWII vet pal of the husband shows up and at the urging of the husband's sister, starts investigatinguntil the whole tangled mess winds up down in Mexico. Where it all ends in a rather abrupt but notexactly surprisng climax.I thought that all together TOO LATE FOR TEARS is a pretty good film but its big weakness is a lack of explanations as to why the femme fatale,wife played by Lizabeth Scott, can turn on the sweetness one second and in a moment or so later be hard as nails when killing her nice guy husband played by Arthur Kennedy. The makers of this film did try to show us her frustration with her hubby as he dithers away, trying to decide what to do with the bag of cash. Or at least they could've showed her lying consistantly about small things as an indication of what she was realy like.But I don't think they did a very convincing job of it, she does seem like a nice person except when someone gets in the way of her chance to keep that bag of money. Maybe many of us would be the same way if someone threw $60,000 (roughly $400,000 in today's money) into our lap at an unexpected moment.If anyone wants to experiment, I'm willing to try.Four Stars.