​Women dominate two forgotten noir classics

This past May, restorations of two long-forgotten film noir classics made their Blu-ray and DVD debut from Flicker Alley. Both films focus on strong female leading characters rather than the male detectives, gangsters, small-time crooks, and/or unwitting schlemiels who typically get lured by a scheming woman to their doom or near-destruction. The reputations of both films had suffered or been ignored over the decades due to the mediocre to poor condition copies available until recent efforts by the Film Noir Foundation to locate higher quality material and restore some of their luster, as well as to provide wider availability for re-evaluation.

Lizabeth Scott, who died last year at age 92, is the driving force behind the plot of “Too Late for Tears” (1949), a fine but relatively little-known example of film noir in its heyday. Unlike most noir films, her character is both the deadly femme fatale and the story’s obsessive, fatally flawed anti-hero, protagonist and antagonist rolled into one. She plays Jane Palmer, a dissatisfied housewife out driving (and arguing) with her husband one night, when suddenly a bag full of money is tossed into the back seat of their convertible by mistake. Her straitlaced husband Alan (Arthur Kennedy) wants to take it to the police, but Jane insists they keep it and immediately starts planning how she’ll spend it and scheming how she can keep it.

Soon sleazy conman Danny Fuller (Dan Duryea) shows up at their apartment posing as a detective, but it’s quickly obvious that the money was a payoff intended for him and he wants it back. It doesn’t take long for Danny to realize that his shady dealings and physical threats are nothing compared with the drastic lengths Jane is willing to go to keep the money, whether it be seduction or cold-blooded murder. A little later Alan’s sister (Kristine Miller) and a man claiming to be a war buddy (Don Defore) figure into the complicated, well-plotted thriller, skillfully adapted to the screen by Roy Huggins from his own novel.

Flicker Alley’s Blu-ray was prepared from the recent 35mm restoration of the film by the UCLA Archive and the Film Noir Foundation, using the best surviving film elements that could be found. Sadly, these were dupe negatives a couple of generations away from the original camera negative, so there is an overall increase in contrast and grain over films restored from pristine 35mm material, but the film still looks better and is more complete than typical Public Domain video dubs of beat-up 16mm TV prints. Sound quality is reasonably good.

There is a modest but worthwhile selection of bonus features, including an informative and lavishly illustrated booklet and a decent audio commentary by historian Alan K. Rode that recaps some of the booklet’s information and goes into great detail on the careers of the actors, director, producer, and writer. There are two brief but interesting featurettes, one covering the film’s production and the other detailing its restoration.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS on Blu-ray – Movie: A- / Video: B+ / Audio: A- / Extras: B-

In “Woman On the Run” (1950) Ann Sheridan stars as Eleanor Johnson, the disillusioned and estranged wife of Frank (Ross Elliot), a struggling artist who has difficulty dealing with his strong-willed wife’s needs. It looks as though he will be the protagonist in the opening scenes while he is walking his dog at night and happens to witness a murder. However, after a brief police interrogation, he disappears into hiding and police detective Ferris (Robert Keith) tries to learn his whereabouts from Eleanor, becoming somewhat attracted to her in the process as he learns that their marriage is on the rocks. Both still want to find Frank before the killer does.

Meanwhile, a persistent reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) latches on to Eleanor to help her evade the police that keep following her, offering to pay a substantial sum if they can find her husband first so he can get an exclusive story. He, too, is attracted to her, and there is plenty of wisecracking back-and-forth banter between them as they follow clues left by Frank and come across several acquaintances who seem to know her husband better than she does. Much of the action (like most noirs) takes place at night, with moody cinematography by the legendary Hal Mohr, and events gradually build to a spectacular climax involving a roller-coaster at an amusement park. Director Norman Foster had been a protégé of Orson Welles, and much of his style reflects that of his mentor.

No 35mm film elements of the independently-produced WOMAN ON THE RUN were known to exist until noir expert Eddie Muller discovered in 2003 that Universal Pictures had a single print off the camera negative in their vaults, which had never been projected. This was used for festival screenings for the next five years but was unfortunately destroyed in a devastating vault fire in 2008. Muller eventually learned that the British Film Archive had a dupe negative of the picture but no usable sound, which had to be re-synched from a video recording.

The Flicker Alley Blu-ray has rather good picture contrast but looks slightly soft and grainy since the original print was no longer available and the camera negative had long disappeared. Sound is quite good. Bonus features include a nice 24-page booklet, a great audio commentary track by Muller, and four featurettes about the film, its amazing path to restoration, its San Francisco locations, and the “Noir City” film festival that rediscovered the film.

WOMAN ON THE RUN on Blu-ray – Movie: A / Video: A- / Audio: A- / Extras: B+