- Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street is one of the more absurdly tragic films noir I've ever seen, and I mean that as a compliment. The film takes a common noir motif, the decent man corrupted by a femme fatale, and exaggerates it far beyond the usual limits. In this case, the decent man is the unfathomably mild-mannered Christopher Cross (pun certainly intended), played by Edward G. Robinson. Robinson, excellent as always, is cast completely against type, portraying a bank cashier who secretly thinks of himself as an artist. He's a meek, sensitive fellow who finds himself married to the shrewish widow Adele (Rosalind Ivan) who came with the apartment, so to speak. The night we meet Chris, he's so lonely that he's willing to walk several blocks in the rain just to talk to someone. Unfortunately, he encounters the wrong couple of someones.
- On his way home, Chris sees a woman being attacked on the street and amusingly rebuffs her attacker with his umbrella. The rescued woman, Kitty (Joan Bennett), is an evasive type, but she manages to be friendly enough while Chris falls madly in love with her. Although she initially brushes Chris off, Kitty's boyfriend/manager/assailant Johnny (Dan Duryea) smells profit behind Chris' embellished artistic ability and encourages Kitty to string him along. What starts out as a small-time grift, however, soon balloons into a rather complicated swindle in which Kitty poses as the artist responsible for Chris' work. As it happens, the art community is willing to overlook Chris' problems with perspective, and it isn't long before Kitty is making a bundle selling his work to a gallery, unbeknownst to the artist himself. Naturally, you'd think that discovering a scam like this would dampen Chris' enthusiasm for Kitty, but Chris just seems happy to hear that his paintings are worth something. The real trouble in this tale arrives when Kitty laughs in his face and tells him the truth about Johnny.
- Part of what makes Chris' final disintegration so compelling is that he starts off as such a deluded, idealistic sap. Really, who but the most ridiculous romantic could say that painting is like falling in love? Moreover, when Chris does fall in love with Kitty, he's constantly talking about robins and flowers and happily buys any story Kitty sells him. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence that Johnny is Kitty's lover, Chris still convinces himself that she "couldn't love a man like that." Kitty and Johnny, on the other hand, have nothing resembling ideals and, paradoxically, seem driven by laziness. Kitty even has to stifle a laugh when Chris confesses that he's a married man. Such considerations hardly seem important in her world. When Chris finally goes over the edge, it's a spectacular plummet into the depths of hallucinatory madness. Jeepers, I love you, Scarlet Street.
- The film is based on the book La Chienne (The Bitch), which pretty much says it all.
