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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 42394
Released: June 14, 2005 |
| Our Price: $6.85 |
| Used Price: $4.49 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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| Features:
Black & White Closed-captioned Dubbed DVD Subtitled NTSC | |
Editorial Review:
It's a man's world. And Ethel Whitehead learns there's only one way for a woman to survive in it: be as tempting as a cupcake and as tough as a 75-cent steak. In the first of three collaborations with director Vincent Sherman, Joan Crawford brings hard-boiled glamour and simmering passion to the role of Ethel, who moves from the wrong side of the tracks to a mobster's mansion to high society one man at a time. Some of those men love her. Some use her. And one a high-rolling racketeer abuses her. When the racketeer murders his rival in Ethel?s swanky living room, she flees a sure murder rap right back to the poverty she thought she had escaped. And this time there may not be a man to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.
DVD Features:Audio Commentary:Commentary by Director Vincent ShermanFeaturette:New Featurette The Crawford Formula: An Interview with Director Vincent Sherman
Description of The Damned Don't Cry:
Joan Crawford bashes her way through this melodrama inspired by the Bugsy Siegel-Virginia Hill story. Our girl walks out of tacky poverty at the beginning and re-shapes herself into a fur-lined mobster's moll, her will of steel out-pointing the men at every stop. David Brian (recently her Flamingo Road co-star) is the looming blond monster who runs the organization, Steve Cochran is the Bugsy guy building his own network in Nevada, and Kent Smith is the meek accountant Joan bullies into becoming a syndicate player. It's all from that mid-career post-Mildred Pierce period that served Crawford so well, with the full-on film noir look (Ted McCord photographed) and the strong whiff of American sleaze.
Joan Crawford's face had assumed its masklike quality at this point, and at times she seems more of a business manager than an actress: organizing each scene, pushing the story along to its next stop. In its own over-the-top way, it works: there isn't a moment when she doesn't seem capable of devouring anybody that stands in her way. Everything is writ large in this movie, which makes it a fitting target for a Carol Burnett send-up... and which also makes it a great deal of fun. --Robert Horton
The Damned Don't Cry Reviews:
A little gem from the Crawford vaults 
2009-02-12 - Good Joan Crawford film, from the latter part of her strong Warner Brothers period. This one is more of a gangster picture than the rich, melodramatic "women's pictures" Crawford mostly made during this time, but there are certainly elements of the latter on display here, too.
It's funny, as I was watching this, I said to myself, "darn, this reminds me of the plot of Warren Beatty's 'Bugsy' movie of several years back." And, of course, as I discovered in one of the DVD's special features, this movie was inspired by exactly that: the story of gangster Bugsy Siegel and his created-from-whole-cloth rich socialite companion, Virginia Hill.
"The Damned Don't Cry" features a clean, sharp image on DVD. There's also a short but informative special feature (which I referred to above) consisting of interviews with director Vincent Sherman and several film scholars/enthusiasts, who offer interesting takes on the film. Other extras include the film's trailer and a movie-length commentary by director Sherman.
Entertaining, tough, and in many ways modern for its time, "The Damned Don't Cry" is well worth any film enthusiast's time.
Nicely-Photographed Noir-Melodrama
2009-02-05 - For me, the best part about this film was the exceptional lighting which made this a great movie to see on DVD. The great black-and-white photography reminded of films like "The Sweet Smell Of Success" and "To Kill A Mockingbird." The camera-work in this movie does not take a backseat to those great films, believe me.
Story-wise, it's a somewhat-familiar Joan Crawford movie with a bit more emphasis on the melodrama than the film noir, a la Mildred Pierce. That's a compliment because "Mildred" was a well-crafted story and so is this. It's an effective mixture of drama and noir. However, unlike "Mildred," this Crawford character ("Ethel" a.k.a "Mrs. Forvbes") has a worldly edge to her with a chip on her big shoulders. It's tough to sympathize with her in this story, frankly.
Kent Smith plays her naive, wimpy dupe for much of the film but when David Brian enters the scene, the movie really picks up. Gangster Brian is nobody's patsy and he's fascinating, portraying the most intense character in the story.
This is another one of the fine classic movies that never got a VHS showing but finally got a break with a 2005 DVD release, which is all the better since the camera-work is deserving of the nice look this transfer gives it. Once more, another impressive movie from 1950, one of the better years Hollywood ever had.
The film is alive with the sound of Joan 
2008-08-20 - This is a one woman show although it clearly was not meant that way. There are several good performances here besides Crawfords. You can feel she's in a battle to survive the studio system and age! She dominates every scene and it's great fun. For melodrama it's quite a good and intense movie. Crawford leaves her teeth marks on everyone and everything. Good supporting cast and that's all they are!
Joan Crawford ON FIRE!
2008-06-22 - She's got a forked tongue and a closet full of ankle-strapped platforms, and baby you'd better believe she's ready to use them. Joan never looked more menacing; what a joy it is to watch her dominate the fops around her in this gem from the ultra-conservative postwar era. The story is a wicked little yarn about a no-luck dame toughening up and taking what she needs out of life by whatever means necessary.
The best scene has to be when Joan arrives at the boss's office wearing a super-trashy skirt suit and a pair chunky-heeled sandals. He asks her what kind of perfume she's wearing and she says something like "Temptress" to which he opens up the window to air the room out. You just don't get stuff like that in movies these days, folks.
"You're asking for trouble, aren't you?"
2007-07-27 - THE DAMNED DON'T CRY reunited Joan Crawford with her "Mildred Pierce" producer Jerry Wald. In another of her trademark noir roles, Ms Crawford played a woman who climbs up from the gutter only to discover that life is far more dangerous at the top.
Ethel Whitehead (Joan Crawford) is a frumpy working-class housewife with an unappreciative husband (Richard Egan). When their son is killed by a speeding car, Ethel packs her bags and leaves for a better life. Ethel's desire to have money and power only lands her in the unsavoury clutches of dangerous mobster George Castleman (David Brian).
This is one of my favourite Crawford vehicles. She's ideally cast as Ethel Whitehead/Lorna Hansen Forbes, a woman caught up in the glamour of wealth but careless in the choice of men she keeps company with. This film was based on a story by Gertrude Walker (and loosely modelled after notorious 1940s gangland moll Virginia Hill's relationship with Bugsy Siegel).
Crawford preferred working with male actors who weren't as famous as she was, and in THE DAMNED DON'T CRY, the main leads are taken by B-movie players David Brian, Steve Cochran and Kent Smith--each manages to hold his own with 'La Crawford'. Selena Royle ("The Harvey Girls") also has a good role as Ethel's influential society friend Patricia Longworth.
This is classic Film Noir, with it's moody shadowed lighting, killer gowns and zingy dialogue. Certainly this captures Joan Crawford at the height of her glamour, and fans wouldn't have it any other way.
The DVD includes the featurette "The Crawford Formula: Real and Reel", audio commentary with director Vincent Sherman, and the trailer. (Single-sided, dual-layer disc).
