Scarlet Street<\/a>" on a local
\nindependent station. The movie stars Edward G. Robinson as an invisible nobody
\ncorrupted by the attentions of a beautiful woman. The director is Fritz Lang,
\nthe legendary German auteur who fled Nazi Germany and made a number of interesting
\nAmerican films over the years. Lang the individual was quite a character —
\nactually wore a monocle, as I recall, and allegedly was a mean, petty, self-glorifying
\nhead-case who complained that his producers always cut his art to ribbons and
\nmade mush of his attempts at cinematic art. <\/p>\nScarlet Street seems like a good match for Lang, because it’s one of the rare
\nfilms that has no redeeming characters. The cast is the work of a storyteller
\nwho genuinely despises his characters and inflicts one terrible punishment after
\nanother upon them. It’s like "Fargo" for the 1940s, except that it’s
\nnot supposed to be a black comedy. Lang didn’t write the screenplay; it’s based
\non a French play whose title translates as "the Bitch." <\/p>\n
Here’s the story: Edward G. Robinson is introduced at a party celebrating his
\n25 years as a bank cashier. When his coworkers yell "speech, speech"
\nhe has nothing interesting to say. After the big boss bails on the party, his
\ncrew crowds around a window to see him getting into a car with a beautiful young
\ndame — putting evil ideas into the heads of everybody, including Christopher
\nCross, Robinson’s cashier. <\/p>\n
On his way home from the party, Chris notices a guy roughing up a woman. He
\nintervenes, knocks the clod out cold and rescues the gorgeous babe — who is
\nleggy, sexy and the shameless owner of a heart of stone. She calls herself Kitty
\nand trust me, she’s got claws. <\/p>\n
Of course a fling will happen between the corruptible Chris and the corrupting
\nKitty, who has a boyfriend named Johnny who is an A Number 1 scoundrel. He was
\nthe one roughing her up; apparently he’s the only guy man enough to secure Kitty’s
\ntender attentions. <\/p>\n
I have to tell the whole story — apologies for the spoilers — to convey
\njust how much scorn the filmmaker has heaped upon his characters. It goes
\nlike this: <\/p>\n
Chris tells Kitty he’s an artist; Kitty assumes he’s one of those rich ones
\nwhose paintings sell for big bucks. She and Johnny angle to milk Chris for all
\nhe’s worth, which isn’t much, but they don’t know that. Chris just paints on
\nthe side and he’s not very good. <\/p>\n
Chris is married to a shrewish hag who hates the sight of him and threatens
\nto throw out all his artworks because she hates the smell of paint. Chris is so defeated by this woman that he’s
\nshown wearing her flowered apron to do the dishes. Humiliation with
\na capital H. Well, Chris is emboldened by Kitty’s attentions and decides he
\nneeds a studio, so he embezzles from the bank and steals from the wife (the
\nwidow of a cop who disappeared trying to rescue a woman from a river) to put
\nKitty up in a swank Village pad. <\/p>\n
Chris brings his paintings over to the new pad, and without his knowledge,
\nJohnny shops a few around, first to a fence, then to a sidewalk artist. Both
\ntell him Chris’s art is crap, but the sidewalk guy volunteers to show a couple
\nof them to see what happens. <\/p>\n
A famous art critic comes along, sees Chris’s paintings, buys both and demands
\nto see more. Turns out Chris is an artistic genius — either that or the critic
\nis a complete idiot (I’m siding with the latter). The critic finds his way way
\nto the Chris\/Kitty pad, where Kitty and Johnny are hanging out. Johnny gets
\nthe bright idea to tell the critic that Kitty painted them. Kitty’s a natural
\nborn golddigger so she goes along with the scheme, figuring she’ll deal with
\nChris later.<\/p>\n
Now Chris wants to dump his wife and marry Kitty, but he needs a way to unload
\nher. A miracle appears in the shape of his wife’s first husband, who didn’t
\ndie; he faked his death to skip out on some debts. By now Chris has larceny
\nin his soul so he tricks this lug into reuniting with the hellish wife — the
\nidea being that if hubby No. 1 didn’t die, Chris isn’t legally married to the
\nshrew. His fiendish reunion plot works like a charm, so he heads over to Kitty’s
\nplace.<\/p>\n
At the swinging pad, Chris finds out about the thing between Kitty and Johnny,
\nwho’ve just had a lover’s spat that caused Johnny to march out in a huff. Kitty
\nridicules Chris with such venom that he loses control and stabs her with an
\nice pick, then flees the scene.<\/p>\n
Johnny shows up minutes later, finds his girl dead and himself the prime suspect
\nin her murder. Now Johnny is a conniving scumbag who likes to rough up his girl,
\nbut he’s no murderer. Nevertheless, he’s tried (Chris testifies against him),
\nconvicted and sentenced to death. He’s goes to the electric chair wailing that
\nhe didn’t do it. <\/p>\n
Chris walks free but the voices of Johnny and Kitty haunt his every footstep.
\nHe tries to hang himself but a couple guys rescue him, robbing him of the chance
\nto end his misery. <\/p>\n
The movie ends with Chris becoming a homeless wanderer who haunts police stations,
\ntrying to convince the cops he’s a killer. They just think he’s just another
\ncrazy bum. <\/p>\n
So: Nothing guy meets beautiful but evil bitch, resorts to murder, lets an
\ninnocent man die in his stead and has the voices of his victims in his head
\nfor the rest of his days. Evil bitch is pummeled to death with an ice pick;
\nno-account boyfriend fries for the murder. Runaway ex-husband gets stuck back
\nin the clutches of the shrewish wife from hell. Moronic art critic and his gallery cronies celebrate inept artwork. This is one mean<\/i> movie.
\n
Check it out if you have a low opinion of the human race. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other day I caught a movie called "Scarlet Street" on a local independent station. The movie stars Edward G. Robinson as an invisible nobody corrupted by the attentions of a beautiful woman. The director is Fritz Lang, the legendary…<\/p>\n
Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}