Event

SCARLET STREET

Dir. Fritz Lang, 1945.
USA, 102 min.

How can a man be so dumb?
The noir and the femme fatale will forever be bound together, merrily going to Hell, dragging all suckers, chumps, marks, rubes and shills into an endless abyss of suffering and death. As well they should! Noir, at its black heart, is about tearing a (seemingly) ordinary Joe to *nothing* while the audience howls for more. Well find that here, on SCARLET STREET, but with a director like Fritz Lang theres more than one twist on the way to the noose. Based on Georges de La Fouchardières novel and play La Chienne (also the basis for the equally great Jean Renoir film by the same name), SCARLET STREET is, quite simply, one of the essential film noirs.

The great Edward G. Robinson plays Christopher Cross, the sap in question, at the end of a sad quarter-century of working as a cashier, enduring his wife and putting what little light still shines in him towards his painting hobby. Like most saps, Chris wants little more than to be some damsels white knight, and that chance actually arrives when he gets between va-va-va-voom Kitty (Joan Bennett, who was in everything from BULLDOG DRUMMOND to SUSPIRIA) and cheap hood Johnny (Dan Duryea of WINCHESTER 73). Through a series of scams, lies, forgeries and tragedies, Chris and Kitty begin one of the darkest descents the screen has brought us, with Lang constantly, methodically twisting the knife, masterfully ratcheting up the tension all the way to the end. Fans of Langs earlier, more directly Expressionistic work like SPIES and the MABUSE films will find lots to love here, Robinson truly plays one of cinemas great sad sacks, Joan Bennett is the embodiment of weaponized seduction, all combining to make a film absolutely perfect for a hot summer night when you cant sleep and your soul cries for something, *anything* but the dreary monotony of our pointless lives. Great date film, too!