The Illusion of Depth

Please note that this week's film has been rated  18  in the UK. Remember Too Late for Tears ? Lizabeth Scott's Jane Palmer is often regarded as the femme fatale to end all femmes fatale, in part because she proves herself to be so completely amoral. Outwardly, she is a typical post-war housewife with a devoted (if slightly bland) husband... but then someone drops a bag of blackmail cash into the wrong car, and sweet, demure Mrs. Palmer reveals herself to be capable of extremes that would give Joan Bennett and Barbara Stanwyck pause. Her film ends (a trail of corpses in her wake) with her almost, almost getting away with it. Too Late for Tears was released in 1949, and Scott's character was the perfect expression of the femme fatale for a society in transition. All those "WACs" and "Rosies the Riveter" of the war era were starting to discover that the bright future for strong independent women that had looked so promising in the 1940s was suddenly lo...