THE DAMNED DON'T CRY
US, 1950, 103 minutes, Black and white.
Joan Crawford, David Brian, Steve Cochran, Kent Smith, Selena Royle.
Directed by Vincent Sherman.
The Damned Don’t Cry is one of the many similar films that Joan Crawford made during the forties and fifties. Here she is a middle class housewife who leaves home and teams up with a gangster. After many sinister and violent experiences she eventually reforms. This is a variation on the ‘woman’s’ picture. Joan looks glamorous, gets involved in crime and then suffers valiantly. It is soap opera of a melodramatic adventure type. Direction is by Vincent Sherman who made several films with Joan Crawford, including Harriet Craig. Other films include Flamingo Road, Sudden Fear, Female on the Beach.
1. The meaning of the title, its tone, indications of themes and tough, hard treatment?
2. The film as a Joan Crawford vehicle? Joan Crawford’s screen image, especially in the forties? The Warner Bros. black and white crisp style? The gangster tradition at that studio? Musical score, atmosphere?
3. The presentation of the American gangster film tradition: the portrait of society, corruption, greed and money, power, luxury? The masculine involvement of gangsters and their power base and exercise of power? Ruthlessness? The feminine side of the gangster world - the gangster's moll, the enterprising woman who could reach heights of wealth and power?
4. The American gangster tradition and the American dreams of success - and their disillusionment?
5. How plausible was the plot? The story of Ethel Whitehead and her involvement in the gangster world? The film an a character study of Ethel? The moralising tone taken by the film, especially the ending, how convincing? The moral to be drawn from the film?
6. Joan Crawford's style as Ethel? Her background, family, her relationship to her husband, her love for her son? Conventional middleclass American housewife? Why could she not settle down? Was the change in her attitude credible?
7. The transition from Ethel to Lorna? Ethel’s inability to remain at home, leaving her husband, her middleclass background and its lack of the luxury that she wanted, her pursuit of wealth and style? Her involvement in the gangster world? Her travelling abroad to learn style? The contrast with her previous life and the film echoing this at various times?
8. The men in the gangster world - the gamblers, the gangsters, their violence, using one another, betrayals? George Castleman and his power? The clash with Nick Prenta? Two facets of the one type of gangster? The varying styles as illustrated in differing incidents?
9. Lorna and her involvement with Castleman? His involving her in the rackets? Her reaction and growing reliance on Nick? Her love for Nick and its consequences?
10. The violence and the seeing of a woman bashed, involved in a gun fight? Did this change her attitude? Saving the life of the accountant? The possibility of some redemption?
11. Her disillusionment and her return to her past? The change at the ending? How convincing in terms of Lorna’s character? In terms of a necessary ending for a screen-play of 1950?
12. How do films like this reveal the basic moral attitudes of Hollywood in terms of right and wrong, good and evil? That good must triumph over evil?
