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Description
A box-office hit in its day (despite being banned in three states), Scarlet Street is perhaps legendary director Fritz Lang's (Metropolis) finest American film. Kino's immaculate 1080P 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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.4 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Film Noir Doesn't Get Any Better than This, Mar 18 2012
By Gerard D. Launay - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Scarlet Street [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
The original story was filmed by the great French director Jean Renoir as "La Chienne" which means "The Bitch." The director was the son of the outstanding impressionist Pierre August Renoir; the son actually sold his father's great art masterworks to subsidize his effort to make films featuring his ambitious wife. In the end, Renoir felt deeply manipulated and divorced her. In Renoir's hands, this is a black comedy. In Fritz Lang's hands, it becomes a tense sexual thriller and the tale of the dark descent of a man who is completely destroyed by his erotic longing for a beautiful woman who never returns his love.Edward G. Robinson plays a shy, henpecked married man who works as an unimportant bank cashier/clerk. In his spare time, he loves to paint and in fact possesses an original vision in his naive paintings. His wife humiliates him and announces the art is worthless.
The film really begins when the Robinson character believes that he has saved a gorgeous woman from being beaten up by a man in the street. (That man happens to be her pimp). Unable to take his eyes off this woman, he allows his sexual desire for her take complete control. All his normal ethics of honesty are misused in his attempt to raise money.
Let's be fair. A woman as gorgeous as Joan Bennett could demand favors from her admirer, particularly when he is so emotionally vulnerable. Obviously, she just leads him along, takes his paintings, and discovers that there is a hot market for them. But all along, she is really attracted to her pimp, who is handsome in a cheap sort of way, mean spirited, and cunning.
When the truth is discovered, needless to say, things get darker and darker.
Compared to other scratchy and dull versions which have appeared earlier on DVD copies, this Kino Classics Edition is a superb translation of the original film onto the disc. The cinematography of dark and rainy streets and confining apartments creates an exterior landscape that matches Edward G. Robinson's sexually repressed character.
As a cinematic treatment of a man's psychological descent into hell, this is one of the best film noirs that I have ever seen.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic, Mar 2 2012
By Lukas - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Scarlet Street [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
One of my favourite film noir movies and in my opinion easily among the best ever made. If you like noir and have not seen this - you absolutely MUST. Don't waste time thinking about it just DO IT. Delighted to see that this has finally been salvaged from the poor quality disappointing prints making it to DVD over recent years. The Kino BluRay version is like seeing it clearly for the first time. The 1080p transfer is very good indeed - but contrary to what the description says I would not go so far as to call it "immaculate". Some parts of the movie have scratches running down them... now this is no huge deal - but if you are going to do a 1080p digital transfer it would seem little additional work to digitally remove these seeing as it's so easy to do... But despite this I have to give the release 5 stars for the sheer quality of the film itself, the superb acting/directing/lighting/script and the fact that we can at last see it all clearly!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Forgotten Gem, May 1 2012
By Bennie R. Grimes - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Scarlet Street [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
Edward G. Robinson sometimes gets a bad rap for his acting because he was type cast as a tough gangster. I'm a fan and have seen a lot of his non-ganster films and Scarlet Street is one of the best. Lots of twists and turns in this movie. The blue ray transfer is great. It makes this noir film look more than just a black and white feature. I would like to thank Kino Classics for deciding to release this movie in the restored form that it deserves.
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