La rue rouge

It's hard to see that your youth has escaped you. It happens to us all. The sad personage of Christopher Cross is very touching. He has seen his life pass with a nice gold watch all he has to show for it. His wife is ugly and mean spirited, his work is dull. He is quite a good painter but hasn't time to do anything about it. Them "she" comes into the picture. All those charms, sexy, vulnerable, and evil, with a connection to Dan Duryea (what a cad) to boot. When the Robinson Character comes to her rescue, it's Johnny (Duryea) who is slapping her around. She is perceptive enough to believe that the well dressed older man must have money, and, if she plays her cards right, she can squeeze him for money. He falls, hook, line, and sinker, and really believes she cares about him. Not only is she an opportunist, she even uses his art as her own to get more money. Because he is moonstruck, he lets her go on and on. There is a subplot concerning his wife's first husband and some other things, but he slowly descends the path to destruction. Everyone watching the movie knows that the poor sap is going to get his at some point. The way it happens is a bit of a stretch. Chris should really feel very little guilt; he is victimized all long the way. But in film noir, the dark elements demand their pound of flesh. He is paid for his foolishness and trust.

Chris Cross is a bank cashier who has just been given a gold watch by his boss for years of faithful service. Chris has three gifts, which are highly sought and cannot be bought: honesty, integrity and talent. The first two earned him the gold watch but the third is something he keeps to himself. He's a "Sunday" painter who paints from the inside out as a means of escaping his colorless life and loveless marriage. Chris is a man who loves beauty but has none himself, and so he fantasizes about some pretty girl that might see beyond his exterior to the man inside. And so one late rainy night chance places a beautiful damsel in distress in this path, and after saving the girl from the villain, he falls desperately in love and to his amazement, the girl loves him back. But things are not what they seem, and in a short while, Chris will trade in the three gifts he does possess for something he can never have. One of the defining films of Classic Film Noir.

I've seen LA CHIENNE, and although most of SCARLET STREET is a remake, the two are entirely different films. LA CHIENNE is virtually a comedy. In fact, it begins with an introduction by puppets (!), so we know we're not to take the plot very seriously. Renoir's film is light and fun, and is very interesting to watch for comparisons of 'moral standards' between France and Hollywood.

By now, you probably know the story. A sad little man gets involved with a prostitute and her pimp. Hollywood toned down the fact that Robinson and Bennett were involved in a sexual relationship, and the ending of the film had to live up to Hollywood's standards of 'morality'. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it yet, but needless to say, the endings between the two films differ in a major way.

What makes SCARLET STREET so outstanding in my opinion, is that given the repressed nature of the protagonist, the film works better because of the changes. You can better understand the pressures of what living as a human doormat has done to this man, and how coiled up he really is. Edward G. Robinson gives one of the best performances of his career, which is saying a lot! I know, there will always be those who will insist on seeing him as the cigar-chomping tough guy only, and won't accept him as anything else, but SCARLET STREET showcases his more subtle talents and his enormous range. Joan Bennett is pure charm and snake oil in this, and Dan Duryea out-weasels Richard Widmark in KISS OF DEATH [in fact, I'll bet good money that the weasel toons in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT were based on Dan Duryea's character!]. Hollywood films will always falter in comparison to other country's films because the industry's fear of offending audiences always dulls the blade of truth. But, at least during the classic era of Hollywood, the talent usually made up for the story flaws. What do you get when you put Fritz Lang, Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea together? Magic!

SCARLET STREET is, no doubt, one of Hollywood's first mature forays into the relationship of a prostitute with her pimp and her client.

Until 1945, the big screen's version of a 'lady of the night' was almost waif-like in her mien, casting innocent doe-like eyes at any gentleman who would like to share "a spot of tea" for a nominal fee. As portrayed by Joan Bennett, Kitty is cool,cynical, calculating, a 'ho' who is world weary and holds no illusions. Dan Duryea as her slick, slimy pimp/boyfriend, Johnny, matches Kitty scene for scene in the seediness of their relationship. "Lazylegs" is Johnny's term of affection for his Kitty when he's not cuffing her about openly on the streets.

Then there's the third wheel to this tragic ride, Edward G. Robinson as the henpecked husband Chris Cross who also happens to be a frustrated weekend artist. Kitty sees Chris as a hearty meal ticket as Chris laps up Kitty's milk, little realizing that his dream girl is a nightmare in waiting.

Director Fritz Lang's unflinching finale leaves the viewer drained of emotion. There is no Hollywood happy ending at the end of SCARLET STREET, just a back alley of guilt, punishment and shame.

It is no coincidence that 'Melancholy Baby' is refrained throughout this flick. As played on Kitty's phonograph, the record is scratched and skips over and over at the same spot. For this recording is, like all the characters who reside on SCARLET STREET, damaged goods.

Christopher Cross, in middle aged, and in a life going nowhere and devoid of love and inspiration. Till one evening he rescues Kitty March from a mugger, it's the start of a relationship that has far reaching consequences for them, and those closest to them.

The previous year director Fritz Lang had made The Woman In The Window, a film that was hugely popular with critics and fans alike. Here he reunites from that excellent film with Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea, the result being what can arguably be described as one of the best exponents of Film Noir's dark sensibilities. Adapting from works by André Mouézy-Éon and Georges de La Fouchardière (novel and play), this story of desperate love and greedy deceit had already had a big screen adaptation from Jean Renoir in 1931 as La chienne, which appropriately enough translates as The Bitch! Now there's a Noir title if ever there was one! What Lang does with this adaptation is drip his own expressionism all over it, whilst crucially he doesn't ease off from the harsher aspects of the story. This is nasty, cruel stuff, and with Lang at the time feeling a bit abused and used by the studio system he was slave to, who better to darkly cloak a sordid story with a biting edge? Is it purely coincidence that Lang took on this film about a struggling artist who's vision is stifled by another? Possibly not one is inclined to feel.

Edward G. Robinson is fabulous as the pathetic Chris Cross. Married to a wife who constantly heckles and belittles him (Rosalind Ivan), Robinson's take on Cross garners empathy by the shed load, so much so that once Kitty (Bennett) and her beau, Johnny Prince (Duryea), start to scheme a scam on Chris, the audience are feeling as desperate as Cross was himself at the start of the movie. Few noir guys have so meekly fell under a femme fatale's spell as the way Cross does for Kitty here. But such is Lang's atmospherics, you not only sense that it's going to go bad, you expect it to, and naturally Robinson is just the man to punch us in the guts with added impetus. Bennett and Duryea are very convincing, almost spitefully enjoying taking the hapless Robinson character for everything they can, and the visuals, especially during the bleak, shadowy last couple of reels, cap the mood perfectly.

This film is in truth probably saying more about its director than anything else that he made. And in fact it was said to be one of his all time favourites. That's nice to find out because it finds him on particularly good, and yes, devilish form. Grim, brilliant and essential film noir. 9/10