Too Late For Tears (1949)
Dan Duryea fails to survive another encounter with film noir in this low-rent quickie, this time due to Lizabeth Scott.
She plays Jane Palmer, a smooth talking whiner who is fed up with being a
middle class housewife and going to dinner parties where she's looked down upon by the upper class broads there.
Nice guy husband Alan placates Jane one night and agrees to turn the car around and skip their scheduled dinner party.
About that time, a car speeds past them and drops a bag into their car.
Inside is several thousands of dollars. Since Alan
is a nice guy, he's kind of like, "we better turn that in to the police so that
the rightful owner can be located." Since Jane has this hair that's not quite
blonde nor brunette, she's a little bit like, "this money going
straight into mama's cookie jar!"
They bicker about what to do with the money
and Jane eventually takes the wheel. Good thing, too. The intended
recipient has seen this messed up transaction take place and is rolling up on
them to get his money back. Jane drives like a Greedy Gus and loses the guy.
They make it home and Alan still wants to turn the money in, while Jane is sizing Alan up for a
bullet hole. We are also introduced to Alan's sister Kathy. She's a good
looking single gal who knows that Jane is a nasty skank and you immediately
have her pegged as the nosy neighbor who's going to try and trip Jane and her
money-grubbing schemes up. 
Alan has no intention of doing anything with the money except give it back. Jane should've
have expected this when she married a dude named Alan. Guys named Alan are
straight arrows. Look at history: Alan Shepard, Alan Thicke, and the Alan
Parsons Project. Once Alan goes to work (see, that's just like an Alan -
is he too good for unemployment?) Jane goes to work buying a bunch of things
only a dame with a bunch of stolen money would get. She wants to be a rich
hussy like all the cool chicks, but the fact is, that as soon as she gets a
whiff of a little cash, she goes out and spends it on gaudy things like she was a
University of Alabama football recruit.
Sensing that there is only so much of
the Alan and Jane story that the audience would stand for (Nice guy husband,
shrewish, unsatisfied wife? Am I watching a home video here or what?) they
bust out their secret weapon: Dan Duryea! Oh, is it sweet to watch his evil,
smiling presence saunter into Jane's house. He claims that he's a detective
and that he just needs to look around her house or he'll just come back with a
warrant.
She agrees, though very nervous and suspicious. He checks everything
out and finds the goodies that Jane just bought. He wants to know where his
dough is and slaps her around a
little, but he's basically a thief and con man,
while she's got unbridled avarice on her side.
Oh yeah, she also lost her
conscience somewhere on the playground in second grade. She agrees to split
the money with him and sets up a meeting spot in a park. You can practically
see the gears grinding in her psychotic little head as she maneuvers Danny
Fuller (Duryea) and Alan into a position where they can both be wiped off the
face of the Earth. 
Alan wants to forget all this money business and takes Jane out to the park where they had
their first date. This is why she selected that location for the meeting with
Fuller. See, Alan has got the claim ticket for the bag in his coat and Jane is
going to get it one way or the other (over Alan's dead body is the overwhelming
favorite at this point). Alan and Jane get a boat and they row out into the
middle of the lake in the park, just like on their first date. Unlike on their first date Alan gets himself pumped full of lead.
She then meets up with Fuller and tells him that there was a little accident on the boat and Alan went and got
himself whacked and now she needs his help dumping Alan's body into the. Fuller is aghast at all this (he's just an extortionist, not a psychotic
killer!) and she tells him he's in it whether he likes it or not. They get rid
of the body and she has Fuller pretend to be her husband as they get off the
boat.
She comes home and tells Kathy that Alan is missing from a liquor run he went out on. Kathy leaves, then Jane leaves, ditches the car and returns the
next morning. Kathy thinks that maybe Alan has come home, but he hasn't. She
suspects that Jane is somehow behind it, but has no proof. 
As Kathy's supsicions grow, she meets Don, one of Alan's friends. It quickly becomes evident that whoever this "friend" of Alan's is, he has
no idea who the heck Alan even was. Kathy doesn't really mind though, because
he tells her that even though he's never met Jane, he hates her smelly guts and
thinks she has gross cooties. He and Kathy become fast
friends.
Once Don meets Jane she immediately has him pegged as an imposter
and calls one of Alan's real buddies. She gets the real buddy to meet with the
fake buddy and it is confirmed that he wasn't with Alan in the service. Real
buddy leaves, Jane pulls a gun on Kathy and Don, Kathy escapes, calls the cops,
comes back, finds Don knocked out and Jane gone! Whew! That Jane is a tornado
of activity! And that doesn't even count her scheme to poison Kathy that ends up with Fuller poisoned instead!
It turns out that Don is the brother of her dead first husband (there was a poor sap before Alan). That guy supposedly killed
himself and Don always believed that it was Jane's doing (talk about jumping to
conclusions). He trails Jane and the money to Mexico and accidental plunge from a hotel balcony brings the film to a close.
This is strictly minor league fare as film noir goes. It has none of the
atmosphere that classics like Black Angel and Phantom Lady had or even low budget efforts like Detour possessed. The story isn't particularly memorable or involving. The problem
is that the person doomed by her own compulsive desires is about as
unsympathetic as you could get. At no point during the film, did you ever hope
that Jane would get away with her scheme, at no point did you ever wish that
maybe she had made some different choices. Jane was simply cold-hearted,
greedy, jerk.
As far the heroes go in this film, they suffer because they're
played like second class characters. I'm expected to care about the sister of
the dead guy or the brother of the dead first husband? That's a little too
distant for my taste. In Phantom Lady, we had someone who loved the victim (the wrongly accused) that was risking
everything to get to the bottom of things. That's something I can buy into and
root for.
The character of Don was so lamely injected into the story line
about halfway through the movie that you can't help feeling
nothing for the character and think he's only there as the strong male presence
the filmmakers thought was needed to defeat Jane. Why couldn't have Kathy done it all on
her own? What did he do, that her character couldn't?
The film is still watchable, partly because you don't see such nasty, purely amoral
characters like Jane all the time, but chiefly as a chance to see Dan Duryea
play yet another type of low life in a film noir. He's probably the most
complicated character, obviously of criminal bent, yet not the completely
inhumane freak that Jane becomes. He just wants his money. He doesn't like
and doesn't want all these deaths on his hands. Jane just sees them as bodies
to step over on her way to riches. Maybe he even falls for her a little (though I
can't see why) and that's why he goes along with her in her plans to murder
half of L.A.
The movie reflects America's post-war mentality
that "keeping up with the Jones" was the raison d'etre and that you aren't
worth anything unless you have lots of material goods. The movie also
perpetuates the myth that crime doesn't pay and that ruthless people don't end
up on top, when we all know that the guilty go unpunished and the unscrupulous
and ruthless become wealthy in this country.
And guys like Alan, who are
content to re-live a treasured memory like a first date? They're destined to end up at the bottom of a lake, gutshot by the one they trusted the most. In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff, "what a country!"
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