The Damned Treasure

A woman's lifelong sense of financial inadequacy finds physical manifestation in a stolen bag of cash in 1949's Too Late for Tears. Directed by Byron Haskin just before he made the definitive film version of Treasure Island (a fact that becomes more intriguing the more I think about it), this film noir about an exceptionally ruthless femme fatale is captivating and intricately intelligent.

Lizbeth Scott stars as Jane Palmer. She and her husband, Alan (Arthur Kennedy), are driving home one night after deciding not to go to a party because Jane can't stand the thought of people looking down on her. Suddenly, a passing car tosses a bag into their back seat and another car starts to chase them. Jane urges Alan to flee.

The bag is stuffed with tens of thousands of dollars. Alan wants to turn it into the police but Jane argues the money is probably untraceable and, if they wait to spend it, and spend it carefully, they can just keep it. Doesn't sound so hard, at least not until Dan Duryea shows up while Alan's at work.

He's playing a tough named Danny and as nasty and threatening as he is, Lizbeth Scott starts to give you the impression that she's even worse, something he notes with admiration a few times. While he's just a thug looking for a fast track to easy living, Jane's a woman in a constant state of anxiety. This cash represents the first shot she's ever had to climb out of the pit she's lived in all her life. As she explains at one point, she grew up in a white collar family that had less money than their neighbours, so when it came to keeping up with the Joneses, her life was a constant series of losses. So when she does kill, she might truly regret it--she certainly seems conflicted. But the monster of warped self-perception won't let her stop.

The cast is all superb--Scott, Kennedy, and Duryea. Don DeFore shows up as a mysterious and off-puttingly affable character. His past and his role in this affair are intriguingly murky and I enjoyed watching one clue after another shift the impression his character made on other characters.

Lizbeth Scott looks so old in the movie, I thought she was at least fifty, but it turns out she was only 28 at the time. I guess she had the same issue as Susan Sarandon, one of those people who's looked 80 since she was 20. Her apparent age adds some edge to her desperation. Maybe the sense of the clock running down would make her extra frantic to raise her economic status.

Too Late for Tears is available on Amazon Prime.

Just How Much Good is a Gun?

Even for the most adept femmes fatale, it can be dangerous to break the heart of an expert marksman. But Mary Beth Hughes does it anyway in 1945's The Great Flamarion, a good low budget noir from Anthony Mann, a director more associated with Westerns.

Erich von Stroheim plays Flamarion, a stoic trick shooter who we see performing onstage alongside husband and wife assistants played by Mary Beth Hughes and Dan Duryea. They play out a little scene where Flamarion pretends to be the husband who comes home to find his wife with her lover. He then precedes to shoot wine glasses, light bulbs, and pieces of Hughes' clothing, including parts of her garters.

Von Stroheim was a great film director as well as an actor and I feel like I've read somewhere analysis of the movie that discusses at length the symbolism of a director literally shooting at his starlet vis-a-vis male gaze or some such. Flamarion does turn out to be a bit repressed and afraid of women--we learn later he had his heart broken by someone named Alma but as far as we're told he's never actually committed acts of violence against women. He just wants to be alone.

That won't do for Connie (Hughes) who wants her husband, Al (Duryea), dead. Al is a drunk so it's not hard to come up with a feasible reason why Flamarion might "accidentally" shoot him during the act. The marksman's tendency to spend all his free time in his room, alone with his gun (make of that what you will), unsurprisingly does nothing to prepare him against Connie's charms. One kiss and he's smitten.

Connie, meanwhile, has her sights set on Eddie (Stephen Barclay). And who knows who else. Hughes is no Barbara Stanwyck or Jane Greer as far as performance goes--you might remember her from the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 classic I Accuse My Parents--but she is ravishing. Von Stroheim is not the best actor but his rigidity works very well to convey Flamarion's repression. Dan Duryea, of course, is always great.

The Great Flamarion is available on Amazon Prime and probably a lot of other places since it's public domain.

And Happy Birthday to-day to the creator of Dancy Flammarion (relation unknown), Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Twitter Sonnet #1358

The wooden saucer holds a spoon of drink.
A tankard thought surpassed supplies of gin.
For all the wine in mind could never sink.
And all the cans could never crack the bin.
Embedded thoughts create a normal voice.
It's time to walk to ev'ry job at once.
Imbued in ev'ry brain's a wavy choice.
It's time to start the weekly freezer hunts.
Confection ferries bring the heavy goods.
The path of candy changed from mint to cream.
Remembrance makes the yearly mental woods.
A settled loop incites the churning dream.
The counted worlds were suns and stars abroad.
A burning land belies the name of sod.