TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949) *** Something's always going on in Hollywood. I don't mean the film industry, that's usually the least of it. But it's responsible for the rest, that and some mystical sidereal alignment. Hollywood's full of desperate people, many of 'em pretty smart. Some of them very smart. All of them desperate. A disproportionate number of women in every group. And there's a lot of them, and the walls get all tight, see, and they see each other and they look in the mirror, and they don't like what they see either place, and then things happen. It's a film noire, and a very good one. Byron Haskin plays some spectacular shots early, granting Hollywood the eeriness that it takes, without demanding, by something more akin to divine right. You can catch it all, the seamy side, that's all of it, in the haunted shots down the apartment hallway. The acting's bad, it's not all good anyway, but that doesn't matter so much when there's a plot to follow instead. And this one doubles back, and double takes, and takes some more, and you just wish it would give it back. Fat chance, duchess.
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