I’m down in LA this weekend for the TCM film festival, and instead of Fry and Laurie, today I give you Lizabeth Scott’s greatest role in TOO LATE FOR TEARS:
You can try crying about this, but it is just too late for tears. There have been lousy, grimy copies of this floating around for years, but the restoration at the festival is heads and shoulders better than any copy you’ll have seen before, so take hope.
LIZABETH SCOTT. Family, I thought before now I knew from femmes fatale. Friends, I knew NOTHING. Lizabeth Scott is the steeliest, the money-grubbingest, the most heartless piece of work to come down the pike in a long, long time. If you want to watch a selfish woman get the best of everyone around her, put this in front of your eyeballs and absorb it.
Related Posts
I can’t believe they left her out of the Oscars “In Memoriam” segment! She’s fantastic in Dead Reckoning with Bogart–she was styled to look like Lauren Bacall by her studio, but I think she’s actually tougher and more mysterious.
I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH. Trigger warning for some implied nonconsensual stuff with that gangster dude, but otherwise, everyone should watch it!
My film-noir-obsessed father gives this Friday post a nod of approval. Lizabeth Scott 4EVA.
Next Friday, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5563mCeIfEE
I’ve been trying to find a copy of that forever! Hooray for youtube!
I adore that movie. It’s also at http://www.openculture.com/free_film_noir_movies along with a bunch of other stuff, but I just keep watching Martha Ivers over and over.
They have The Red House, but the sound is unacceptable. I didn’t realize what a great film that is til it was restored and put out on Blu Ray. It has Too Late For Tears but I hadn’t watched it yet.
My friend wrote a great piece about her here: http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/lizabeth-scott
Thank you for posting that! I love Lizbeth Scott and hadn’t realized she passed away this year.
“I just don’t like being patronized. .. I don’t think I could take another evening of it.”
I think that’s sufficient provocation for whatever foul deeds she gets up to in the film.
The reviews of this film on the open culture film noir site are – well, here is a review from a man who gave it 5 stars because he thinks it shows the truth about how all women are liars and will probably kill someone eventually.
“Good acting. Most women are EXACTLY this way—excessively money hungry and can always kill for it directly or indirectly. Many men are this way too. Why do you think people divorce and remarried, etc? It is a shame! Millions of people are heading to hell in a hand-basket. Great movie. Great lesson. Beware of whom you call a wife or husband. You may be marrying to your death and destruction. Also, look at the pains and sufferings of the liar-woman. Lying and deception are grave evils of self-destruction. You can never get away with sin!!! Impossible! It always finds you out! Jesus in a person’s life is MOST CRITICAL!!!”
Then there is this little poem:
“I understand her desire. Her husband was a petit bourgeois. I would have kept the money too. But it was wrong that she killed people. When I saw her dead I felt very bad.”
And obviously there’s a weird one where someone is weird about her boobs.
I was named for her, and no one seems to know who she is, so I’m excited to see this story!
By any chance, are you a #TCMParty tweeter?
I love noir dames. There is much to be said about noir and how it portrays women, but at least in noir films female characters tend to have their own motivations and ambitions and those motivations and ambitions drive the plot. Yes, it’s true that the underlying message is that when women take control all hell breaks loose – until they get punished. But I like to think of the glass as half full.
hi,
I LOVE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH. Trigger warning for some implied nonconsensual stuff with that gangster dude, but otherwise, everyone should watch it!