About Scarlet Street (1945)
The story behind the film
After the success of their thriller The Woman in the Window (1944), director Fritz Lang, producer Walter Wanger and actress Joan Bennett (Wanger's wife) formed their own company, Diana Productions, and reunited Bennett with co-stars Edward G. Robinson and Dan Duryea. Their first project was Scarlet Street, a remake of Jean Renoir's French film La Chienne (1931), both based on a novel by Georges de La Fouchardière.
Robinson plays Christopher Cross, a meek, middle-aged cashier who paints on Sundays and is trapped in a loveless marriage with a nagging wife. One night he rescues a young woman, Kitty, from what looks like a mugging and becomes infatuated with her. Kitty assumes he is a wealthy artist, and her boyfriend, the slick small-time con man Johnny, sees an opportunity: get Chris to pay for an apartment, and sell his paintings under Kitty's name. When the art world starts to take notice, the lies spiral toward disaster.
Cast & crew
- Directed by Fritz Lang; screenplay by Dudley Nichols
- Edward G. Robinson as Christopher Cross
- Joan Bennett as Katharine "Kitty" March
- Dan Duryea as Johnny Prince
- Margaret Lindsay as Millie Ray
- Rosalind Ivan as Adele Cross, Chris's wife
- Cinematography by Milton Krasner
Why it's worth watching
Scarlet Street is one of the darkest films Hollywood released in the 1940s. Robinson, usually cast as gangsters, gives a heartbreaking performance as a timid man whose one chance at romance and recognition is a fraud. Bennett and Duryea are memorably venal as a couple who feel no guilt at all, and Lang's precise, shadowy direction makes Greenwich Village (built on the Universal backlot) feel claustrophobic and doomed.
The ending was famously bleak for its time. Fans of film noir often rank Scarlet Street among the very best examples of the style.
Fun facts
- Censors in New York, Milwaukee and Atlanta banned the film for a time in early 1946 because of its dark plot and its treatment of crime.
- Lang owned the majority stake in Diana Productions; Bennett also held a share.
- Lang wanted to shoot exterior scenes in Greenwich Village but was not given permission, so Universal built the streets on its backlot.
- The paintings attributed to Chris in the film were created for the production by artist John Decker.
Public-domain status
Scarlet Street is in the public domain in the United States and is listed among US public-domain films; the French novel it is based on is also public domain in the US. See "Rights & source" below.