Directed by Vincent Sherman. Written by Herold Medford and Jerome Weidman
A woman’s want for better lands her among the sharks in Vincent Sherman’s The Damned Don’t Cry, a movie that speaks of economic hardships and its insidious consequences before devolving into pulp. Joan Crawford proves why the name carries old Hollywood weight, but her performance remains the main attraction in an otherwise just-fine film.
Crawford is Ethel Whitehead, wife of a laborer and heartbroken mother to a young boy. She wants to give him everything he wants, but everything costs money, and her husband’s not making a lot of that. They fight over it, and a tragedy sees Ethel pack what she owns (it fits in one medium-sized suitcase) and set out. She’ll make her own way.
Hustling hard is the play, and Ethel gains traction in a world where men like something beautiful to look at. Cynicism takes hold of Ethel, yet she finds there are limits to what she can achieve, despite how charming, crafty, cunning, and cutthroat she may be. It’s not quite a glass ceiling, it’s more like the glass pane for a picture frame that keeps her rigidly in one place, good for one thing.
The Damned Don’t Cry is a pedestal for Joan Crawford. As Ethel, she’s moving, sultry, determined, indomitable, and vulnerable over the movie’s runtime. Her performance almost doesn’t belong in a movie that’s fairly rote genre fare and where all other characters are mostly archetype tough men spewing gangster talk and bluster. In contrast, Crawford’s work is a fulfilling portrait of an ambitious woman who sheds most of her own humanity out of sheer desperation and finds folly therein, and this contrast is symptomatic of Sherman’s movie as a whole.
The Damned Don’t Cry starts with a sincerity that could suggest a drama about the limitations put on women’s financial independence and agency in the workforce, but baser wants win out. It all becomes about crooks, crime, and conspiracies, and while Crawford carries every scene she’s in, there’s little to make you want to see it through, with her supporting cast of characters a mediocre crew at best.
It’s almost unfair to compare the two, but if you want to watch a great movie about a hard-working woman’s rise and fall starring Joan Crawford, then watch Mildred Pierce instead.
Mikkel Frederiksen 