In the last few decades, Hollywood producers have very often used critically and commercially successful films from France for their own remakes. For many critics, such practice was a sign that American cinema, at least the segment associated with big studios, was beginning to lack the last sparks of originality. However, remaking French films isn’t such a new phenomenon in Hollywood. It happened even half a century ago, but the results were usually much better than today.
That was the case with La Chienne, a 1931 classic by René Clair. In 1945 it was remade as Scarlet Street, a classic film noir by Fritz Lang. The plot of the film is set in New York City. Christopher Cross (played by Edward G. Robinson) is a cashier who has nothing in life except his job, a gold watch and a shrewish wife Adele (played by Rosalind Ivan). One night he accidentally stumbles into a dark alley and rescues beautiful Kitty March (played by Joan Bennett) from a street thug. Almost immediately he falls in love with her, never knowing that Kitty actually works on the streets for a living and that the thug happened to be her abusive boyfriend Johnny (played by Dan Duryea).
Of course, Christopher, blinded by a feeling of love he hadn’t felt for decades, lies too. Since his hobby is amateur painting, he presents himself as a successful and wealthy artist. Kitty sees that as an opportunity to get a lot of money, and these misunderstandings are just the first in a spiral of events that would lead to an ironic and tragic finale.
Although Scarlet Street belongs to the realm of film noir, viewers accustomed to more conventional examples of that genre might have some difficulty labelling it as such. The reason lies in the script by Dudley Nichols, which brings a refreshing mix of drama, tragedy and devastatingly black humour that would seem somewhat out of place in a standard film noir. People are not supposed to laugh at the characters and situations in film noir, but that is the case here.
To make this achievement even more unusual, the characters are played by a small army of very capable actors. Edward G. Robinson as Chris Cross gives probably one of his best performances; his character is a flawed, artistic soul, intelligent enough to deceive people but blinded by feelings and unable to detect deception himself. Since we could meet such small, inconspicuous people every day on the street, his tragedy comes very close to viewers. Joan Bennett is also very good as the not-so-bright femme fatale, but Dan Duryea steals the show. His character is painted in the most unflattering light – he doesn’t even look like someone who could steal women’s hearts – but Duryea plays him as someone who could invoke the audience’s sympathy in the end.
Fritz Lang as director brought some of the European feeling into this film. First of all, his New York doesn’t look like an American metropolis. Instead, it looks like any big European town, with the slang phrases spoken by Bennett and Duryea as the only clear national identification. But Lang’s biggest original contribution is his ironic portrayal of the New York art world – critics, dealers and artist wannabes (with the always-reliable Vladimir Sokoloff in one of such supporting roles).
It is a real shame that the movie was made in black and white; the paintings that play an important role in the plot should have been displayed in their full glory. However, this isn’t the only problem Scarlet Street had. The tragicomic irony of the film and its unexpected finale is compromised by too-dark overtones in the epilogue. Those last scenes, although powerful in their own way, seem somewhat out of place and nothing more than Lang’s concession to censors unable to digest an unconventional finale.
On the other hand, despite those flaws, this film is a real gem of Old Hollywood, one that justifies the existence of remakes.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on December 1st 1999)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/17058-scarlet-street Critic: AAA
