German director Fritz Lang is best known for the highly influential films from relatively early in his career, especially Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). But he also had a brief Hollywood heyday during the mid 1940s, when he made some of his best films.
I am particularly enamored with Ministry of Fear (1944), a less acknowledged suspense thriller starring Ray Milland. But Lang's most noted film from the era is Scarlet Street, a remake of the early French talkie La Chienne (1931).
Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) is a middle-aged cashier at a company run by J.J. Hogarth (Russell Hicks). Cross has a dull job and a shrewish wife (Rosalind Ivan), and his only pleasure in life comes from painting.
One night Christopher (No relation to the vapid pop singer from the early 1980s) stops a man from attacking a woman in the streets. The man flees, and Christopher immediately falls for the woman.
We soon learn that she is Kitty (Joan Bennett), a con artist under the spell of her abusive, manipulative boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea). Kitty quickly sizes up Christopher as a mark, and convinces him that she is an unattached actress. Christopher lies as well, implying that he is a wealthy and famous painter. All three members of the love triangle are not as clever as they think they are, and become enmeshed by their own deceptions.
Much of the cast and crew of Scarlet Street (Robinson, Bennett, Duryea) had worked on Lang's The Woman in the Window from the year before.
Scarlet Street has been claimed by film noir. This attribution is understandable. The lighting is dark, with heavy use of shadows. The characters are all shady as well. Kitty is certainly a femme fatale, although hints are dropped that she is an inherently decent person who has become completely corrupted by Johnny. Being the most naive, Robinson is also the most sympathetic. But even he eventually turns to crime to fulfill his passions.
But while Scarlet Street has elements of film noir, it is in reality a black comedy. While Robinson plays it straight throughout, Bennett and Duryea camp it up marvelously. Bennett laughs when Robinson claims to be a painter: "And here I had you pegged as a cashier!" She also has to suppress laughter when Robinson reveals that he is married, and shock when Duryea passes her off as the mysterious painter.
But Duryea has the most enjoyable role, as the cocky, cynical con artist who unknowingly alienates everybody except Bennett. Duryea was Hollywood's creep stereotype throughout the 1940s (The Little Foxes, The Woman in the Window, Ministry of Fear) for a good reason. No one else could be so entertainingly obnoxious, at least not until Eddie Haskell of the Leave it to Beaver sitcom.
While Alfred Hitchcock was billed as "the master of suspense", perhaps it was Lang who gave him the most competition for the title. Lang's ability to see both the sinister and the sympathetic aspects of human weaknesses sets him apart from most other so called 'film noir' directors. (69/100)
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