Chris seems to be just too nice for his own good. He's a reliable, largely underappreciated employee who plugs away daily at his desk. But painting is one thing he's passionate about, and it saves him from the sheer boredom of mediocrity. He's a rather unhappy character--first his impossible wife is kicking him around, and it doesn't take long for Kitty to sink her materialistic little hooks into Chris too. As events take place within the film, the strength and weaknesses of Chris Cross are explored. Will he exploit opportunities or is he destined to always be a slave to his character flaws? Many marvelous little touches raise this film above the average and make it memorable. I'd never heard of this film until recently when I came across the title in a book about film noir. As a fan of director, Fritz Lang's films, I sought out this film. The plot is extremely clever--full of unpredictable twists and turns. Kitty deceives Chris, but he is guilty of his own sort of deception.

The DVD quality is not great, but I am not downgrading the film for that. The DVD is produced by Alpha video at a very reasonable price. The film is not re-mastered at all, and there are no extra features. At some points during the film, a thin vertical line was visible, and the sound quality varied (seems to get louder), plus there were some crackles. The black and white picture is grainy at times. All of these defects, however, did not interfere with my ability to watch and enjoy the film. It's about the same quality as a television version of the film. If you enjoyed "Woman in the Window" (a much more famous Fritz Lang/Edgar G Robinson/Joan Bennett film) you should enjoy this one too--displacedhuman

A worthy Fritz Lang film all round (Rating: 4.00)
Review : This review refers to the Alpha Video (Gotham) DVD.

Overall Quality of DVD: *** /**** Sound: ** /**** Plot: ***1/2 /**** Acting: ***1/2 /**** Cinematography: ***1/2 /**** Direction: ***1/2 /****

The first time I watched this film the whole effect did not set in until a few days later and it began tugging at me in the back of my mind (as do a lot of Fritz Lang films, at least, for me). There is much more to this film than a simple "film noir" although it is noir indeed.

You start to sympathize with Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) because he is a true artist - he thinks of the world philosophically and poetically (as many artist do). To create art you must almost make yourself oblivious to the everyday machinations of the world, almost to the point of innocence, and Edward G. Robinson's character portrays the artist in this exact manner.

All he wants to do is paint but all his life he has been told what a failure he is and so he is nearly ashamed of his art and hides it from people but like any true artist he can not stop his love of art and so he hides in the bathroom like a prisoner to paint in solitude.

I love the scene where he finally shows one of his paintings of a flower that Joan Bennett gave him to an acquaintance who looks at the painting in total surprise and asks "Where did you find a flower such as this?" and Edward G. Robinson points to the flower in the glass sitting upon the bathroom sink and the acquaintance looks at him dumbfounded, points to the painting and asks "THIS? is what you see when you look at that?" - Edward G. Robinson nods and gives him a look that seems to say "You mean, you don't see it this way?" - it's a PERFECT scene expressing the inner feelings of an artist (any kind of artist).

Joan Bennett plays the scheming femme-fatale to perfection and you hate her guts. Dan Duryea also encourages Joan Bennett's character well as a two-bit thief who really needs, and deserves, to have his head kicked in.

Whoever did the actual paintings for this film did a great job as they are very surrealistic, modern-art and quite representative of Christopher Cross's psychic innerself.

If you're expecting the quality of a Criterion Collection DVD you will be disappointed, but if you have patience you will enjoy this top-notch film by a great director.

It takes a Village. (Rating: 5.00)
Review : Greenwich Village, that is, which we learn was home to "hop-heads" and "long-hairs" in 1945 (!) Fritz Lang's masterpiece tells the story of a middle-aged bank clerk (Edward G. Robinson, dependably brilliant) who escapes the dreariness of his job and his marriage to a harpy by spending his Sundays indulging his only hobby: painting. His life gets considerably more exciting when he runs across Joan Bennett, a con-artist and tramp who -- with the help of her pimp, the always-amusing Dan Duryea -- proceeds to slowly drain his financial wherewithal. Of course, the greatest irony is that Robinson has conned the con-artists: they think he's a wealthy artist because, in his attempt to impress Bennett, he neglected to mention that he's a just a lowly bank cashier. The movie shows us a dizzying amount of untruths, scams, cons, misperceptions . . . nothing is what it seems. Truth is relative, baby. While Lang has a lot of fun with all the illusions, he also dedicates himself to the principle that no good -- or bad -- deed goes unpunished, and that great noir principle, the inescapability from Fate, starts weighing more and more heavily on our characters as they perambulate through their sundry fictions and cons. -- For the sake of historical interest, it should be noted that *Scarlet Street* is an American remake of Jean Renoir's excellent *La Chienne*. (This story was based on a French novel; hence the concern with painting. Needless to say, the story migrated easily to Greenwich Village during the budding of the beatnik movement.) Renoir, in his film, spends a considerable amount of time building up the characterizations -- at the expense of the plot, to some degree. Lang, however, correctly understood that these characters are not as inherently interesting as the situation itself, with its myriad variations on the theme of Reality and (or versus) Illusion. As a result, Lang's movie is rather more suspenseful than Renoir's. Also of note: *Scarlet Street* is a follow-up of sorts to Lang's previous movie, *The Woman in the Window*, which featured the same cast (Robinson, Bennett, and Duryea)! It's a masterpiece, too. [A special word of congratulations must go to "Alpha Video": Congratulations on crafting the ugliest-looking and poorest-sounding DVD I have ever seen or heard. It's a great thing, when masterpieces in the Public Domain can be snatched up by any unscrupulous producer. Simply burn an old magnetic-tape version onto a digital disc, press a few thousand copies, and voila! -- Instant profit. Bravo!]

Good movie...Horrible film quality (Rating: 1.00)
Review : Why is it that at least 4 of Edward G. Robinson's high quality
movies have been "preserved," both in video and DVD, in horrid condition. Scarlet Street is probably the worst of the lot, but The Red House, Woman in the Window, and even The Stranger with Orson Welles are all available only in very bad condition. I would imagine there are many TV stations that own much better prints that could be used. Whether in the public domain or not, all of the above films except The Red House could be considered classics (Fritz Lang directing or original scripts and performances) and should have by now gotten a preservation treatment.