Joan Crawford plays Edith Whitehead, the worn-down wife of an oil worker who walks out on him after the accidental death of their only child. As another reviewer here has noted, this film is an interesting hybrid--both a woman's film and a film noir. It's a woman's film in the way she goes from rags to riches and changes her identity to that of Ethel Forbes, a wealthy socialite. It's noir in the sense that she accomplishes this by becoming a tough-talking gangster's moll. But she's not as smart as she thinks she is and in the end, gets taken down and ends up back with her parents in the same dreary house she started out in. In the vocabulary of women's films, she has to punished for daring to abandon her husband. But female viewers got to vicariously see her wear a lot of terrific clothes and get treated (at least temporarily) like a queen. Crawford acts well in this film, with a great supporting cast. A well-crafted film and unjustly neglected film.
Review of The Damned Don't Cry
