Scarlet Street (Fritz Lang, 1945)

[Sloper]

Is anyone else bothered by the sheer gloating sadism of this film? Lang’s one of those directors who’s all at sea when it comes to eliciting any kind of human feeling from the viewer. The only exception I can think of is M, and the pathos in that film is entirely down to Peter Lorre’s performance – and, I guess, to Lang’s giving him the time and the space to give such a performance. Lang’s approach to human beings is detached, clinical and callous; and this is why, for a long time, I’ve felt that Scarlet Street fundamentally doesn’t work as a film. As a teenager (with an Edward G. Robinson fixation) I used to watch it compulsively, but always came away with a really sour taste in my mouth. The way that

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Robinson is shown being punished at the end, sleeping rough in the snow and having to watch his own portrait of Kitty being sold for a fortune, and then shuffling away, broken, taunted by the voices in his head; and he can’t even kill himself or get arrested; and he can’t even sleep on a bench; and it’s Christmas; I mean Jesus, talk about heavy-going…

seems so at odds with the portrayal of his character in the rest of the film. After all, Chris Cross is not merely pathetic, he is also intelligent, cultured, patient, kind; look at the way he is introduced to us, stammering modestly at the party, slinking away from his lecherous, drunken colleagues, accompanying his friend in the rain, confiding in him about his loneliness.

From the start, he’s a lot like the character Robinson played in Woman in the Window, and as in that film he seems to be someone we’re meant to identify with. Yet whereas this aspect of the characterisation in the earlier film remained consistent throughout, in Scarlet Street a disconcerting shift takes place at the climax; and suddenly Chris becomes an object of condemnation, and is punished seemingly as though he deserves it. We’re made to sympathise and identify; and then we have to stand back and judge. I’ve always wondered if the problem is in Robinson’s performance – perhaps he overplays the pathos, and the film itself is unable to support such a three-dimensional portrayal.

Of course the obvious reason for the sadism of the ending is that

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the murderer has to be seen to suffer for what he has done

but what I realised the last time I watched this film – and Kalat’s reference to Eisner’s observations clarified this for me – is that

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Chris does not suffer from guilt at the end. What tortures him is sexual jealousy, the thought that Kitty and Johnny will now be together, and happy, in heaven; and the wonderful irony of this is that he remains oblivious to the fact that Kitty’s love for Johnny was just as unrequited as his own love for her, and that even in the unlikely event that those two characters have both gone to heaven (remember what a hard time Liliom got…) they sure as hell won’t be happy together. Kalat remarks on how Lang sneaks in the eminently censorable scene where an innocent man is executed, and his whole approach to the ending - the overkill on the punishment - is calculated to make everyone think it's rigorously, even rather excessively, moral...

so now when I watch Scarlet Street I can pretty much ignore the sadism, and just enjoy every second of this truly twisted, subversive, amoral, up-yours to decent society.

I just watched La Chienne, which set me thinking about all this. Whatever differences there are between the two films, they have this in common: as the third puppet says at the start of Renoir’s film, this story has no moral. There’s just these three people who are kind of stupid, and they do stuff, and it all goes horribly wrong – and that’s life.

I'm not that keen on Renoir generally, so I'd be interested to know what his fans make of La Chienne - I get the impression it's regarded as quite a minor work?

[vivahawks]

Well, there's a difference between a film being sadistic and its characters being that way. For me the ending, though bitterly ironic, isn't sadistic, and in fact I think this is one of Lang's most anguished and humanly affecting films. The crux of Robinson's torture is that it all comes out of himself--yes, he seems like a mensch, but Lang's point is always that there are no genuine "nice guys"; there's just as much capacity for evil and self-destruction inside them as there is inside a guy like Dan Duryea's character, which is why I don't think Chris is an object of condemnation in the way you mean. That presupposes that the audience can view itself on a higher moral level than Chris, but Lang's point is that we're not any better than he is, we just haven't crossed our line yet (or come across Joan Bennett). If you don't accept that, then I suppose the movie can seem cruel and sadistic, but Lang's intentions are quite different and very moralistic--and very different from the genuine amorality of La chienne (which I agree with davidhare is one of Renoir's great masterpieces and one of the greatest early sound films).

[Sloper]

Lang's point is always that there are no genuine "nice guys"; there's just as much capacity for evil and self-destruction inside them as there is inside a guy like Dan Duryea's character, which is why I don't think Chris is an object of condemnation in the way you mean. That presupposes that the audience can view itself on a higher moral level than Chris, but Lang's point is that we're not any better than he is, we just haven't crossed our line yet

Didn't Lang say something like, 'From Scarlet Street on, I was basically trying to prove that the average citizen is no better than a criminal'? You seem to see Lang's intent as being to make his audience less judgemental and condemnatory (and perhaps to influence their opinions about capital punishment?) - and I guess you could read Scarlet Street as a more extreme version of the cautionary tale presented in Woman in the Window, warning us how easily even the most respectable citizen can be sucked into a life of crime once he lets his guard down.

I'd have no trouble reading WITW that way, but somehow it just doesn't work for Scarlet Street, precisely because, as I said before,

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Chris does not suffer from guilt at the end of the film. The deleted scene of him cheering Johnny's death would have emphasised this even more clearly, I think.

In WITW, Robinson has learned his lesson at the end, and knows to stick to his safe, conventional little routines, in which he can remain reasonably happy. The same is not the case for the hero of Scarlet Street: he has no loving wife, no decent job, no exclusive club to go to, and is even threatened (by Adele) with the loss of his paintings. Kitty represents a lifeline, and he attaches himself to her not just on an idle whim, but because he needs to be loved, wanted and respected; he needs it so badly he can even fall for this utterly wretched woman, who from the start is depicted as a selfish, air-headed bitch, and as such bears very little resemblance to the equivalent character in the earlier film.

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Chris's agony at the end has nothing to do with any crimes he has committed, but stems simply from the fact that Kitty did not love him after all. I get the impression that what pains him at the end, when he sees the 'self-portrait' being sold, is not that he's lost out on the money, but that he's forced to be confronted with the idealised vision of Kitty to which he is still in thrall - the camera keeps the shot of the painting in full-frame for a long time as it moves towards the car, indicating how much this still dominates Chris's thoughts. (Interesting to compare Legrand in La Chienne - does he not see the painting, or does he just not care?) What is the moral of all this? It isn't, 'no crime goes unpunished', since he isn't punished for the crime, even by his conscience;

it isn't 'don't fall in love with whores', since Chris only does this out of desperation, out of a real need; it isn't 'don't stick to your comfortable, safe existence', because Chris doesn't have one of those; and so I don't see how the story can work as a sort of 'there but for the grace of God goes you' tale, since it isn't clear what Chris was supposed to do instead of what he did. He wouldn't have been any better off if he'd told Kitty the truth and she'd dumped him, he'd still have been trapped in his lonely, loveless existence.

So the fact that the torture all comes out of himself kind of vitiates the moral point of the story - the distinction davidhare draws between the 'deterministic fatalism' of Lang's earlier work, and the belief that fate emerges out of character which, supposedly, dominates his later work, is interesting. Chris falls because of things in himself, but they're not things he can do anything about, so you have a strange mix of determinism and character-driven tragedy. But since he still effectively has no choice, there cannot be a moral to the story.

I do find Scarlet Street a very affecting film, but the sympathy is in the writing and the acting. I've never seen any evidence, in any Lang film, that he was capable of approaching a story with real compassion or pity - the attitude you're describing, vivahawks, sounds like one of amoral contempt for the human race, not one of 'he who is without sin cast the first stone'-type compassion. And this is why I feel a split reaction to Scarlet Street; it's a masterpiece, like most of Lang's films, but it has no real heart.

[tryavna]

I've never seen any evidence, in any Lang film, that he was capable of approaching a story with real compassion or pity - the attitude you're describing, vivahawks, sounds like one of amoral contempt for the human race, not one of 'he who is without sin cast the first stone'-type compassion. And this is why I feel a split reaction to Scarlet Street; it's a masterpiece, like most of Lang's films, but it has no real heart.

Sloper, I think I may agree with your description of Lang's worldview. (I think there are exceptions, however. Have you seen either Destiny, his early silent film and first masterpiece, or Clash By Night? Both of those films strike me as displaying a deeply sympathetic perspective on the part of the director.) For me, however, I think it is precisely Lang's misanthropy that I love. He's like a curmudgeonly old uncle at a family reunion, cutting through all the cheap sentimentality and moralizing with an independent-minded cynicism. Like David says, there's something grown-up about his films, particularly within the context of most Hollywood cinema.

[HerrSchreck]

I think Lang is perhaps guilty in the Germanic sense of a sort of cellular stoicism, but his heart, and the anguished nature of his disposition viz the cruelties and injustices in the world are on display via the rage implicit in a film like Scarlet Street... Cross is a kind of Dostoyevskian Idiot, walking through the world devoid of blemish-- at first. The dishonesty of others when he opens his heart thinking he is going to receive like for like-- destroys him utterly.

Langs films are filled with this: men who start out pure or with good intentions, who become bitter, corrupted, or somehow wizened up thru coming into contact with the hard facts of life at some point or another. A hugely overlooked masterpiece I never hear mentioned (perhaps because of the lack of a decent dvd presentation in R1 aside from a mucked up Image taken from a tv 16mm) is the sublime You ONly Live Once, which reveals Lang at his most deeply sensitive, nuanced, and tender in his treatment of two pure lovers turning from the wickedness of the world to find ecstasy in

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death

I think Lang's anger is throwing you, but he is nowhere near the despairing nature of say, a Tod Browning, who saw nothing good in anything and essentially painted most characters as corrupt. I simply don't think Lang saw a way out for human beings, I think-- as a man who Knew He KNew, and was surrounded by jealous, sniveling, vapid souls waylaying him at every turn in his attempt to create something truly worthwhile and rare-- he didn't (at least in his American phase) get a chance to dispense with his anger. His life was filmmaking... he knew what he was capable of making... and knew the clock of his life was ticking away as he was being stuck by low men into the muck (some for reasons having to do with his, Lang's, own irascible personality) of production.. and so his films constantly portray men of noble or pure or at least decent intent shoved into shit, causing some form of corrupting bitterness to take hold.

He was different from an FW Murnau, who also focused on the corrupting and destructive impositions of mankind upon purity-- but yet while Murnau tended to enjoy focusing and lingering on the beauty which came before the muck, Lang begins with a few moments of beauty and runs straight into the shadows.

It's just who he was-- far more masculine, far more heterosexual, far more angry, far more comfortable thrashing around in his vitriol. He also lived longer than Murnau (who himself couldnt handle the american studio system, where at least Lang kept his hand in for nigh 30 yrs beyond the death of Murnau upon his Tahitian exile).

I love them both. But mistaking the anger of Lang for a lack of sensitivity or a schadenfreude, I think, is wrong. He had a deep sense of justice, and the anger is the proof of the sensitive core in there.

Watch You Only Live Once. It's one of the most sensitive films ever made.

[Sloper]

The sheer succulent sexuality of it all

God yes - this really jumps out at me now in a way that it didn't when I was a teenager. It's not, of course, as tangible or overt as in La Chienne, but then again Robinson's character is much more sex-driven than Simon's. What I loved about Michel Simon was how utterly insouciant he was about everything, he doesn't even seem to invest that much in his painting, and even his affair with The Bitch has a kind of idle quality to it. The scene where

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he pleads with her before killing her makes such an interesting contrast to Scarlet Street - the sight of him kneeling on the bed is so comic, and then you don't even see the murder, you're just asked to take it for granted (of course he kills her - who wouldn't?). (By the way, that moment when Dede drives up in his car, barging into the crowd of witnesses - so priceless!) Legrand isn't particularly wracked by guilt or sexual jealousy afterwards, he just moves onto the next thing. Lang's presentation of the character is much more (as you say David) passionate, and more sexual - you can just smell Chris's hormonal longings, and the utter disgust with which Kitty responds - so in a way the murder makes more sense in terms of the character, as a final outburst of long pent-up passion, Chris's one and only phallic assertion, chopping up her icy heart with his tiny pick (hard to resist, isn't it?)

Tryavna, I love Lang's hard-nosed attitude as well, and the curmudgeonly uncle comparison is very apt - he's the one you can rely on not to be sentimental, or at least to not let sentimentality work in his films. I've even come to love Kent and Lili in the Testament for this very reason! I just think that sometimes, when the story demands something a bit more sympathetic, there can be a bit of a vacuum when Lang is involved (much more the case with You Only Live Once, I felt).

Edit: Schreck, I just saw your post – talk about coincidence. I saw You Only Live Once quite recently, and had similar problems with it. Partly I felt the narrative was a little slack, and the twists of fate were a little too arbitrary (not unlike in Mizoguchi’s Oharu), and I also have a slight problem with the two stars. I like Henry Fonda but he seemed stiff and uncomfortable, and I’m sorry but something about Sylvia Sydney just annoys the hell out of me. The story in itself is a very sensitive and tragic one – but the way it’s structured, as well as the way it’s played, made it feel to me like another clinically detached exercise. The more sentimental aspects seemed ornamental, and not deeply felt or convincingly put across. I understand the ending was imposed on the film, so it would be unfair to single that out, but it seemed emblematic of a problem that runs throughout the film. I agree that Lang evidently wanted to manufacture a very sensitive, tragic tale here; but I’m afraid I came away feeling that he just didn’t quite have whatever it takes to pull the heartstrings. LeRoy’s Chain Gang, on the other hand, kills me every single time…

I shamefully haven't seen Destiny or Clash By Night - but with great anti-heroes like Stanwyck and Ryan, I'm not surprised if Lang achieved a bit more depth of character there.

[vivahawks]

Thanks Sloper for your response. I think the main difference in our views comes down to how you define morality: Lang's is much harsher than the kind of half-hearted "suffering murderer" or "stick to your safe comfortable existence" tropes that censors required. As I see it, Lang's universe is deeply Christian, only lacking Christ (if we ignore the perverse sacrifical redemptive heroines obviously absent in the Robinson/Bennett films), in the sense that there's an absolute moral code but also the certainty that such a code is impossible to keep--in that sense he's absolutely condemnatory. His "moral" is simply to remind us of this fact, producing a tragic compassion and self-awareness in the audience--this is what I mean when I say he discourages the ordinary condemnation of the audience, and also why Lang's morality and his irony are inseparable.

Didn't Lang say something like, 'From Scarlet Street on, I was basically trying to prove that the average citizen is no better than a criminal'? You seem to see Lang's intent as being to make his audience less judgemental and condemnatory (and perhaps to influence their opinions about capital punishment?) - and I guess you could read Scarlet Street as a more extreme version of the cautionary tale presented in Woman in the Window, warning us how easily even the most respectable citizen can be sucked into a life of crime once he lets his guard down.

That was basically my thrust, except for the last part about letting your guard down. The point is that there is no guard to keep up: the only guard (a false one) is the belief that I'm intrinsically better than that--a self-deceiving attitude also common in revenge stories, hence perhaps Lang's interest in the latter. The cautionary tale is not "don't act this way", it's simply: "don't judge, because you WILL act this way when the time comes". Unpalatable and hard to take, yes, but much more rigorous and logical than the ordinary superficial moral reasoning that Robinson gradually abandons in Scarlet and Woman in the Window.

What is the moral of all this? It isn't, 'no crime goes unpunished', since he isn't punished for the crime, even by his conscience; it isn't 'don't fall in love with whores', since Chris only does this out of desperation, out of a real need; it isn't 'don't stick to your comfortable, safe existence', because Chris doesn't have one of those; and so I don't see how the story can work as a sort of 'there but for the grace of God goes you' tale, since it isn't clear what Chris was supposed to do instead of what he did. He wouldn't have been any better off if he'd told Kitty the truth and she'd dumped him, he'd still have been trapped in his lonely, loveless existence.

However, it's clear that Chris IS greatly punished, just not in the usual ways we expect and that he "deserves". Yes, his guilt is actually self-pity, but isn't that what ordinary guilt often shades into in reality? Again, just because Chris is amoral in dismissing what he's done wrong doesn't mean the movie shares his view.

I do find Scarlet Street a very affecting film, but the sympathy is in the writing and the acting. I've never seen any evidence, in any Lang film, that he was capable of approaching a story with real compassion or pity - the attitude you're describing, vivahawks, sounds like one of amoral contempt for the human race, not one of 'he who is without sin cast the first stone'-type compassion. And this is why I feel a split reaction to Scarlet Street; it's a masterpiece, like most of Lang's films, but it has no real heart.

I can understand that reaction (though I would second tryavna's suggestion of Clash by Night as an example of a compassionate Lang), but my point again is that the compassion, contempt, pity, etc in his films are quite different from the ordinary, hence his toughness and adultness. The question seems to be whether fate or fallen nature preclude a meaningful morality, which moves towards heavy philosophical/theological ground (and back to the Christian themes I see in Lang). A simple answer might be that you use "He who is without sin" in opposition to the "amoral contempt" for the fated evil of the human race; however, it's worth remembering that the compassion of the verse you cite comes from exactly the same framework of all-encompassing human sin and fallenness that underlies Lang's universe and his seeming "contempt". It's not at all amoral, and I don't feel it's contempt but rather, as I said in the beginning, an ironic tragic awareness.

[Sloper]

No offence taken, David! I realise complaints about Lang's sadism might seem a bit wet, but my problem with films like SS and You Only Live Once probably stem from, as vivahawks suggests, the conflict between Lang's very head-on, tragic, hard-nosed sensibility, and the demands of US censors. I think this is why, as a rule, I prefer Lang's German films - the grim and totally unsentimental bleakness and honesty of films like Die Nibelungen, M, and of course the Mabuse films, was always going to get at least partly lost in translation when Lang went to Hollywood. But this conflict is also part of what makes a film like Scarlet Street so interesting.

vivahawks - your reading of Lang's morality is very interesting. In the light of davidhare's comment about the 'current era', I'm trying to think of a film (an American one) that does something similar. There are a number of parallels with The Talented Mr Ripley, and though some complain that Minghella softens and dilutes Highsmith's original character, to me the portrayal of spiralling psychosis and self-destruction in the film is horrifying in a way that few succesful, mainstream films are, as well as being thoroughly empathetic. It has a similar effect to the one you perceive in Scarlet Street: Matt Damon's Ripley is also a sort of unblemished idiot, pushed by the selfishness of others into annihiliating both them and himself in a way that most people can (but perhaps would rather not) identify with.

[Belmondo]

Definate parallels with Ripley, although I recall the title character being more manipulative from the start and ready to use his made up skills to succeed in a world full of unsympathetic people.
For me, the downward spiral of the main character in "Scarlet Street" provides a complete world view and is completely successful in presenting the POV of the director - the only thing left to argue about is the extent to which this view can be universalized.
Random thoughts:
For whatever reason, E.G. Robinson reminded me of Laird Cregar in both "Hangover Square" and "The Lodger".
Even after the production code collapsed and you could get away with murder on screen, plenty of good stories left with the poor fool commiting crime because of a woman and left rotting with what he did as the femme fatale suns herself on a beach, as in "Body Heat".

[psufootball07]

The more I watch this film the more it impresses me. The use of lighting to symbolize our main characters disorientation both morally and psychologically. In class it was enjoyable at parts, and I do feel that it starts out a tad bit odd and slow, but turns into one hell of a flick.

My question is which version off Amazon should I purchase:

Scarlet Street (remastered) for 22.49 which was released in 2005

or

Scarlet Street (enhanced) for 19.95 which was released in 2008

DVD Beaver reviews the 2005 version and I was wondering what the thoughts were to the best edition to purchase. The money doesnt matter too much as its only $3 difference.

[Sloper]

The film is in the public domain so there are about a million editions, most of them reputedly crap, and it looks like the 2008 edition you refer to is one of them. Get the Kino release - great picture quality, great commentary.

[HerrSchreck]

Yeah, Kalat can seal just about any deal in my case.

[Giulio]

For those who loved this film like me there's a marvellous, restored edition from the french label carlotta (with no forced french subtitles) at EUR19.90

[Matt]

I categorically dislike Fritz Lang’s American films, but Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea are both so good at being so bad (gleefully sadistic as said above) in this, that it’s an almost illicit thrill. And of course, Robinson is equally adept at playing pathetic patsies and villainous slime balls (often in the same role, e.g. The Red House and The Sea Wolf). I adore Renoir and Michel Simon’s collaborations, but this is the better filmed version of the story for me.

[FrauBlucher]

Matt, I'm assuming you watched or recorded the TCM twin bill. I agree the Lang version is the better version. It's has much more of a sinister feel to it. Although, I do like the Renoir version, which I'd like to revisit again soon. (I didn't see it last night)

[Matt]

Yes, I had seen them both before but the TCM double bill last night really put them in contrast with each other.

I’ve always been a little obsessed with this basic plot line (pathetic stooge gets wrapped up in a lover who seems too good to be true and annihilates everything). It’s a rich sub-genre!

[FrauBlucher]

And the contrast between Lang and Renoir is terrific to witness. Same material, one is dark and in your face and the other is subtler and seems happenstance

[therewillbeblus]

I actually prefer Joan Bennett in The Woman in the Window, who steals the movie away from the two arresting male actors, oddly by underplaying her hand to the point of becoming an enigmatic prowling cat woman. Scarlet Street is the better movie, though I've never loved either, despite seeing them many times over the years since film classes in undergrad!

[knives]

And the contrast between Lang and Renoir is terrific to witness. Same material, one is dark and in your face and the other is subtler and seems happenstance

I’d argue that the Lang is subtler in its style and expression of theme with the Renoir seeming needlessly cartoonish and aloof.

[FrauBlucher]

That is true, but I really mean the concepts of the plot of the two films where Lang's is menacing and you feel it. While Renoir moves along in a subtler way and cartoonish is definitely accurate (better description than mine)