Prime Time: Scarlet Street (1945)

Reuniting the director and stars of The Woman In The Window, this film shows a man who wanders down a dark path, led there by love/infatuation. He's manipulated and used, which eventually makes him angry and irrational, but it's hard to feel much sympathy for him, considering how he makes one bad decision after another.

Edward G. Robinson is Christopher Cross, an unhappily married man who finds his life brightened up slightly after a chance encounter with a woman named "Kitty" (Joan Bennett). He doesn't realise that Kitty is in a relationship with an opportunistic crook named Johnny (Dan Duryea), and so wastes his time and money getting an apartment for Kitty, where he gets to paint her and spend time in her company. Embezzling from his work, Christopher is desperate to figure out a way to make his relationship with Kitty more official. He doesn't realise that Kitty is just stringing him along. And neither of them realise that his paintings are actually worth a bit of money to the right collector.

It's nice, comforting, in a way to watch this Fritz Lang movie and see him so at ease with the cast he used to well in The Woman In The Window. The screenplay by Dudley Nichols (based on La Chienne, which had previously been filmed by Jean Renoir) is decent enough, it may not fire off the zingers but it gets all the characters were they should be and moves the plot forward in a way that never feels ridiculous or implausible.

Robinson is very good in his central role, a rather sad figure who fools himself into thinking he has found a shot at true happiness. His behaviour is that of a man in typical midlife-crisis mode, even though he may be a bit older, but he also looks self-aware and uncomfortable, not used to the apparent affections of such a lovely lady. Bennett is excellent, just the right mix of cute and moody, while viewers know it is all deliberate in order to keep a man wound round her little finger. Duryea is comfortable in the role of main rogue Johnny, Margaret Lindsay is good as the friend of Kitty who never warms to Johnny, and Rosalind Ivers is Mrs Cross, a rather stern and unhelpful woman who helps her husband be resolved in his actions.

I am in the minority here, in that I preferred the previous collaboration between director and stars, but this is a film that has a lot to recommend to fans of classic cinema. It is a well-crafted morality tale with solid performances from the cast, decent presentation throughout, and a dark and fitting ending to it all. And it feels like it has been remade/reworked numerous times, although I cannot put my finger on a prime example to cite right now. All suggestions and memory prompts are welcome.

7/10

There's a region-locked disc here.
Americans can buy the same disc here.