Five years after her Best Actress Oscar for MILDRED PIERCE, Joan Crawford was still a star at Warners but THE DAMNED DON'T CRY showed her vehicles needing an MOT.
Vincent Sherman directed his first of three Crawford films (while they had an affair) giving her fans a Best Of... compilation.
MILDRED PIERCE's careworn wife? Ethel is unhappily married to a skinflint. When his anger over her buying a new bike leads to their son's death, Ethel leaves...
She makes extra cash as a dress manufacturer's model by entertaining out-of-town buyers. Soon Ethel is a cynical broad who knows the score.
Promoting her accountant boyfriend to her shady friends, Ethel meets a gangster boss; she is soon his mistress and posing as fake oil heiress Lorna for him.
HUMOURESQUE's Glamourous Joan? She finds herself trapped when a younger gangster attempts to take over both her and her lover's empire...
Shelf or charity shop? *Just* lurking in the plastic DVD storage box because of Joan's hard-boiled broad rattling out lines like "Don't talk to me about self-respect. That's something you tell yourself you got when you got nothing else" while giving us one of the most unsympathetic characters she ever played. The film has all the Warner Brothers Film Noir-ish elements but it's far-fetched plot and b-movie cast lose one's interest by the end when Joan gets slapped around by David Brian's deadly dull gangster boss. A saving grace is Selena Royle's knowing society woman-down-on-her-heels who shows 'Lorna' how to fake her heiress persona.
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