Electric Trio Vol. 8
'Too Late for Tears' (1949), 'Hong Kong, Hong Kong' (1983), and 'Jessica Forever' (2018)
Electric Trio is a column where I look at some of cinema history’s countless underseen, underappreciated, and largely forgotten works. The format (or gimmick, if you prefer) is simple: three films, three paragraphs each. Hopefully these posts will, on occasion, move a few of my readers to seek out a film they were previously unfamiliar with. If not, I hope that reading about them proves a worthwhile experience, at least.
Too Late for Tears (1949)
Heading home from a party one night, married couple Jane (an extraordinary Lizabeth Scott) and Alan Palmer’s (Arthur Kennedy) lives are upended when a passing truck tosses a bag filled with $60,000 into their car. Trouble immediately finds them as they’re chased by another vehicle, obviously looking for the cash that has somehow found its way to the Palmers. Though they evade their pursuers, their relationship and, eventually, their lives are further threatened when the two can’t agree on what to do with the money — Jane wants them to keep it for themselves while Alan wants to take it to the police — as well as with the arrival Danny Fuller (played with extraordinary menace by Dan Duryea), a man who claims the money that fell into the Palmers’ lap actually belongs to him.
In spite of the fact that director Byron Haskin, best known for the adventure film Treasure Island (1950) and the H.G. Wells adaptation The War of the Worlds (1953), boasts the sensibilities of a run-of-the-mill post-war Hollywood workman — which might as well make him Fritz Lang amidst the current crop of industry hacks — Too Late for Tears’ lighting and cinematography, courtesy of Hap Hodges and William C. Mellor, respectively, lean so far into the “noir” side of film noir, it ends up being quite visually distinct. Even in a genre so steeped in shadows, it’s rare to find a film that feels this nocturnal, this gloomy.
It isn’t just the visuals that put this a step above the barrage of noirs produced during the era, however. For one, Scott delivers a very memorable performance as the ruthless and greedy femme fatale. For another, screenwriter Roy Huggins’ casting of the noir’s most enduring stock character as the protagonist allows for a more complex exploration of her psychology or at least the depths of her mundane middle-class depravity. Jane will stop at nothing to get what she wants — throughout Too Late’s 99-minute runtime, she disposes of pesky do-gooders and crooks alike — even as the noose continually tightens around her neck. And the final image Haskin leaves us on, that of a blood-streaked hand lying atop crumpled hundred-dollar bills, ranks amongst the genre’s best.
Hong Kong, Hong Kong (1983)
Neither gritty social realism nor melancholy romantic dramas are the first (or second or third) things most audiences would think to associate with Shaw Brothers Studio, the legendary Hong Kong film studio which operated from 1925 to 2011. Most fondly remembered for producing famous works by King Hu (1966’s Come Drink With Me), Chang Cheh (1967’s The One-Armed Swordsman), and Lau Kar-leung (1978’s The 36th Chamber of Shaolin), Shaw Brothers Studio actually produced films from a wide variety of genres including musicals, comedies, and yes, Lino Brocka-esque realist dramas such as Clifford Choi’s Hong Kong, Hong Kong, released in 1983.
Choi’s film, an urban tragedy if nothing else, not only succeeds on the strength of its drama but also as a portrait of ‘80s Hong Kong as seen from the bottom. Man Si Sun (Cherie Chung) arrives from mainland China as an illegal immigrant but her hopes for a better life quickly collide with the harsh reality of slums, unhelpful relatives, her precarious political status as an undocumented mainlander, and a whole host of men looking to take (sexual) advantage of her vulnerable position. The only ray of hope in her life is Kong Yuen Sang (Alex Man), a down-on-his-luck boxer and gambling addict with whom she falls in love.
Of course, things aren’t as simple as them riding off into the sunset together. While he tries to evade creditors and find success in the unscrupulous, criminal world of professional boxing, she finds herself married off to an older man whom everyone calls Uncle Kwai (Herman Kwan). In spite of their circumstances, the two lovers cling to both their dreams and their love and the scenes of them together go from being rife with anticipation to dripping with sensuality, each encounter captured with a great deal of sensitivity by cinematographer Robert Huke. But the fact that Hong Kong is so easy on the eyes just makes the tragic turns the story ultimately takes all the more heartbreaking.
Jessica Forever (2018)
What to do with our lost, troubled, and violent boys? Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s 2018 sci-fi fantasy drama Jessica Forever shows a vision of a future beyond the dominant ideological paradigms of what is termed toxic masculinity — there isn’t a trace of anything resembling “masculinist” grievance politics — or pat pontificating about “unlearning problematic behavior.” Rather, hope comes in the form of the titular Jessica (played by the enigmatic Aomi Muyock) who acts as a figure of motherly, divine love for a gang of young men looking to leave their violent pasts behind them while trying to navigate a dystopian landscape.
The figure of Jessica is an interesting one; the positioning of a woman as the leader and de facto caregiver of a group of damaged boys obviously seems ripe to be discoursed about. However, framing the film as a fantasy of a selfless woman saving a bunch of violent male youths from their doom undersells what exactly it is Poggi and Vinel are getting at. The earlier use of the word “divine” isn’t an accident, as the directors themselves have referred to their main character as a “goddess” in interviews, a characterization which shifts the underlying dynamic away from a mere treatise on gender and towards something more elemental, timeless, and, perhaps, abstract.
Jessica’s love for the ragtag band of boys around her isn’t merely juxtaposed with their history of and continued capacity for cruelty but the cruelty of the world at large. When a new recruit is gunned down by a drone, controlled by whichever government or corporation that created the surveillance state nightmare the characters inhabit, the tears she sheds over his dead body alter the very fabric of reality itself. It’s here where the filmmaking duo’s portrayal of a fallen world and its fallen people comes through in its purest, most affecting form: the harshness, the brutality might never be fully excised — Jessica’s love, notably, isn’t a panacea for all of the world’s ills — but moments of tenderness, understanding, beauty, and miraculousness will always manage to shine through the cracks.
Looking forward to a great read!!