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> Scarlet Street (Remastered Edition) |
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see larger picture
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Staring:
Edward G. Robinson,
Joan Bennett,
Dan Duryea,
Margaret Lindsay,
Jess Barker
Director:
Fritz Lang
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $13.07
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Kino International
EAN: 0738329042028
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Label: KINO VIDEO
Manufacturer: KINO VIDEO
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: KINO VIDEO
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2005-11-22
Running Time: 101
Studio: KINO VIDEO
Theatrical Release Date: 1945-12-28 |
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Product Description
A box-office hit in its day (despite being banned in three states), Scarlet Street is perhaps legendary director Fritz Lang's (M, Metropolis) finest American film. But for decades, Scarlet Street has languished on poor quality VHS tape and in colorized versions. Kino's immaculate new HD transfer, from a 35mm Library of Congress vault negative, restores Lang's extravagantly fatalistic vision to its original B&W glory. When middle-aged milquetoast Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson -- Double Indemnity, Little Caesar) rescues street-walking bad girl Kitty (Joan Bennett -- The Reckless Moment) from the rain slicked gutters of an eerily artificial backlot Greenwich Village, he plunges headlong into a whirlpool of lust, larceny and revenge. As Chris' obsession with the irresistibly vulgar Kitty grows, the meek cashier is seduced, corrupted, humiliated and transformed into an avenging monster before implacable fate and perverse justice triumph in the most satisfyingly downbeat denouement in the history of American film. Both Scarlet Street producer Walter Wanger's wife and director Lang's mistress, Joan Bennett created a femme fatale icon as the unapologetically erotic and ruthless Kitty. Robinson breathes subtle, fragile humanity into Chris Cross while film noir super-heavy Dan Duryea, as Kitty's pimp boyfriend Johnny, skillfully molds "a vicious and serpentine creature out of a cheap, chiseling tin horn." (The New York Times). Packed with hairpin plot twists from screenwriter Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach) and "bristling with fine directorial touches and expert acting" (Time), Scarlet Street is a dark gem of film noir and golden age Hollywood filmmaking at its finest.
Amazon.com
Kino Video's remastered edition of Scarlet Street finally does justice to one of the best film noir classics of the 1940s. Less than a year after scoring a critical and popular success with The Woman in the Window, director Fritz Lang reunited with stars Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea for this fatalistic New York City tale of a meek, middle-aged cashier and aspiring artist named Christopher Cross (Robinson) who unwittingly falls into a trap set by a pair of Greenwich Village con artists (Bennett, Duryea) who plot to sell his paintings and make off with the profits. In addition to Lang's masterful use of studio backlot locations and cinematographer Milton Krasner's exquisite control of light and shadow, the film draws its primary strength from the atypical performance by Robinson (typically so good at playing heavies, and a knowledgeable art collector off-screen) as a hen-pecked husband and self-professed failure whose withered ego makes him especially vulnerable to the false charms of Bennett, a femme fatale as heartless as she is ultimately doomed. Her scandalous behavior on screen and off (Bennett was the wife of producer Walter Wanger and Lang's mistress) and Duryea's pimpish amorality made Scarlet Street both immensely popular and scandalous enough to be banned in three states when the film was released in late 1945, but in Lang's dark vision of corrupted souls and avenging angels, nobody goes unpunished. The ending of Scarlet Street is as unforgiving as it is unforgettable, and in the hands of Fritz Lang, it's the purest essence of film noir at its finest. Kino's DVD release offers a high-definition digital transfer from a 35-millimeter negative preserved by the Library of Congress (in other words, it puts every previous video release to shame), and there's an astute, scholarly commentary by Lang expert David Kalat that puts Scarlet Street into critical perspective with Lang's career and film noir in general. For fans of the genre, this is a must-own DVD. --Jeff Shannon
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A Portrait of a Young Woman, 2010-03-24
Scarlet Street, 1945 film
The film begins on a city street at night. A car stops in front of a club. Christopher Cross gets an award for 25 years of faithful service. Three on a match? The boss steps out with a beautiful young woman. Cross paints on Sundays. He sees a man beating a young woman and runs over to stop it. A police officer is called, but the man ran away. Cross walks her home, they stop for a drink. "You're not so old." She's an actress. Cross paints for fun. Kitty March has quick answers. Cross' wife Adele was the widow of a police detective. We see Cross' home life. Then we see Kitty's home life with her boyfriend, and her housekeeping. Her boyfriend Johnny has dreams for getting to "Easy Street". He wants her to tap into the old man's wealth. Millie is a model and warns Kitty about Johnny.
Chris and Kitty become friends. They have lunch. Kitty tells Chris she's broke and needs money for rent. A studio apartment would give him a place to paint. Kitty acts surprised with Chris' confession! "Poor Chris." [$500 was a lot of money then.] Will Chris get the money? Adele complains about her home life. She doesn't even own a radio. [Wartime rationing?] Chris searches a locked drawer, then reads about a local murder. He makes a decision. Johnny tells Kitty how to get $1,000. Can he succeed in Hollywood? Chris doesn't like Johnny. Kitty has costs as an actress, can Chris help? "Don't forget the money." Johnny asks the value of Chris' paintings. Chris works late and is surprised by the manager. We learn more about Johnny's character. There is a surprise about those pictures!
A knock on the door brings another unexpected surprise. Johnny thinks quick, and tells who painted those pictures. [Was this a fatal mistake?] Kitty is a good actress. [Does this mock art critics?] Will Chris paint Kitty? Adele sees pictures at an exhibition, and accuses Chris of copying a famous artist! Now Chris learns the truth. Kitty has an answer. Katharine March is the new popular artist for the cultural elite. Chris gets a shocking surprise from a man in the street! Can he pay off another man to keep quiet? Does Chris have a plan to solve his dilemma? Will he find a new problem with Kitty? Kitty gets a surprise too. "Can I help it if I'm in love?" Kitty tells Chris off, and makes him very angry. [How did Johnny get that Packard?]
The NY newspaper has an article on the famous painter in Greenwich Village. Chris is called to the office of J.J. Hogarth. There is another surprise. Johnny has a lot of explaining to do to the police. "I really can't paint." "Nobody gets away with murder." Will his conscience get to him? Will he wind up on the Bowery haunted by his memories?
This movie is like an echo of "The Woman in the Window". It starts off slower moving but has a more dramatic story in the end.
Lang's most pessimistic, deterministic noir, and one of his best, 2010-02-21
** Spoilers ahead in the last paragraphs, be warned **
Made the year after Fritz Lang directed The Woman in the Window (MGM Film Noir), with the same excellent DP (Milton Krasner) and three of the same principal cast members (Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea), this is another tale of another middle-aged man getting mixed up with art and a young beauty and ending up involved in murder - but there the similarities largely end; whereas the earlier film is among the lightest and most broadly entertaining and humorous in the noir cycle, this film with many of the same creative personalities ends up one of the darkest and most despairing.
Christopher Cross (Robinson) is a bank teller, struggling to make ends meet and pushed around by a domineering wife (Rosalind Ivan) who he married for convenience - it's her apartment they live in. He's dreamed of being a painter, and as the film opens he is being honored for his many years of service by his boss, who leaves the party early for a rendezvous with his mistress. Cross invites a friend over to see his paintings, then wanders somewhat drunkenly homewards. On the way, he spies a young woman being attacked by a man, and steps in to break it up. The grateful young woman, Kitty March (Joan Bennett) allows Cross to take her home, and they stop for a drink at the bar under her building. She's flirtatious with him, and he not used to these feelings ends up telling her that he paints, and not wanting to admit that he's a lowly teller, allows her to believe that he is a successful artist. Warmed by drink and her attentions, he wants to join her in her apartment, but she shrugs him off....
Until, later on, her boyfriend, Johnny (Dan Duryea) has a different idea. They both need money, and Kitty (whom Duryea refers to as "Lazy Legs") doesn't want to go back to modeling. Johnny quickly hatches a plan to blackmail Chris, believing that he's a famous painter whose works sell for thousands. Chris is only too willing to help out Kitty (with Johnny trying to stay in the background and pretending to be her roommate's boyfriend), going so far as to rent her an apartment of her own with money he's pilfered from his job - and with the secondary goal of having a place to paint for himself. But soon the jig seems to be up, when Johnny finds out that Chris' paintings are worthless....or are they?
Lie piles on lie, as Chris' wife's dead husband comes back to blackmail him also - as Johnny concocts a plan to make Kitty out to be the real artist behind the suddenly popular primitives that Chris has painted, and as Chris continues to steal for a would-be mistress who has never loved him, and even at the end can only laugh at him, preferring the company of the brutal and lying Johnny and never realizing that Chris has any kind of strength in him at all, much less the strength to end their relationship as brutally as possible....
None of the main characters in Scarlet Street are admirable in the least - from the philandering bank president, to Chris' nasty wife Adele, always comparing him in the negative to the husband she thought dead (who in reality has no desire to return to her), to the lazy and foolish Kitty, the violent and deceitful Johnny, and the weak and rather dim and naive Chris, who in the end manages to escape the same terrible fates that some of the other characters have succumbed to - but suffers a torment that is in some respects worse, and longer-lasting. The final irony - his painting now known by the world, but attributed to someone else, is deliciously and coldly presented; the work lives on, but oh at what price, to all involved in its creation. Perhaps a metaphor that it is often the sellers, and not the producers of the work, who are the beneficiaries of the profits and fame that accrue to them.
END OF SPOILERS
The whole cast is terrific - Robinson and Duryea excelling here albeit playing roles that were fairly typical for them, Bennett doing perhaps her most unpleasant and amoral femme fatale turn - and the photography and design manage to give the film a great New York feeling, despite the shot-in-studio Hollywood production; this is one of the best depictions of the relentless, get-ahead city life and the oppressiveness of the tenements from this period that I've seen, particularly in noir. The Kino disc is short on extras but is unquestionably worth the price over the various public domain cheapo editions of the film, some of which are barely watchable.
Essential.
Unwatchable Transfer, 2010-03-11
We stopped after fifteen minutes because the quality of the transfer (and perhaps the print from which it was taken) was so poor as to be unwatchable. Dark, smudged, occasionally pixallated images make Eddie Robinson and Joan Fontaine almost unrecognizable.
Unique Story, Masterful Noir, 2010-03-27
Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson) has worked for his company for 25 years, and he is finally being rewarded for his hard work. After the extravagant party where he drinks and toasts with the bosses, Chris walks home late at night. He witnesses a beautiful girl (Joan Bennett) being hit by her boyfriend (Dan Duryea), but he thinks he was a stranger who was trying to rob her. Kitty plays along and asks him to buy her a drink.
The relationship is doomed from the start. Kitty thinks Chris is a wealthy artist, and her boyfriend persuades her to romance Chris for his money. Chris wants to make Kitty happy, so he begins stealing from his boss to rent a studio apartment for her, and for him to paint in. The boyfriend sells the paintings and says Kitty painted them, cheating Chris out of notoriety and cash.
Fritz Lang is an excellent noir director. The film oozes with seductive lighting and beautiful sets. Additionally, the paintings used for Cross' artworks are rather good and interesting. Their beauty adds to the beauty of the film. The common theme of "Come to Me my Melancholy Baby" is eerie and used masterfully.
Fortunately, Kino made the effort to clean up the print instead of putting out another public domain print of the film. It's a great movie that should be seen this way, with a crisp picture so we can enjoy the great art photography.
Don't buy this!, 2010-03-14
The quality of the video on this DVD is terrible!!! DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS! There seems to be a remastered copy available. Maybe that is worth the money. This I wouldn't order again if it were free.
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