Scarlet Street is a deliciously lurid remake of Jean Renoir’s 1931 film La Chienne, itself based on the novel and play by Georges de La Fonchardiere and Andre Moueze-Eon. The original title translates from French for female dog, better known as a five-letter word starting with “b.”
Joan Bennett is the Bitch of Scarlet Street
The “b” in this moody tale is played by Joan Bennett. After years of playing blonde ingénues, Bennett's association with Lang's noirs provided a career boost marked by newly brunette locks (which added mystery) and an edgy, almost sadistic sexiness.
In fact, it's not a stretch to say that in Scarlet Street, Bennett is among the most brazenly evil women in the noir canon, right up there with Ann Savage’s Vera in Detour, released the same year.
The third member of Scarlet Street's romantic triangle is Dan Duryea, the Snark King of the 1940s. His on-screen gift for slapping women made him one of the decade’s most memorable nasties. Here, as her boyfriend Johnny, the forever snide Duryea repeatedly smacks Bennett around, which helped get the film banned in numerous states and municipalities. That Bennett enjoys the slapping tells you everything you need to know about her character.
Lang, who’d fled Nazi Germany a dozen years before Scarlet Street, brought his native cinema’s shadowy, sinister expressionism to his American noirs, especially this one, in which he worked with director of photography Milton Krasner.
From the very start, Lang exhibits some nice touches. Like the opening night scene on a New York street, where music of an organ grinder (with monkey in tow) establishes an appropriately carney atmosphere for the freak show that follows.
Edward G. Robinson Plays Christopher Cross in Scarlet Street
Robinson is cast against type as Christopher Cross, a meek, hopelessly henpecked cashier at a financial firm. The film opens at a banquet where he’s being feted for 25 years of service to the company, complete with the requisite gold watch.
But there's an ominous tone. When Chris’ affluent boss lights three cigars on a match, he teasingly asks, “You’re not superstitious, are you Chris?” Cross says no, but secretly crosses his fingers.
We sense this Christopher Cross won’t be finding himself between the moon and New York City.
Robinson's Chris Cross (great name, huh?) is beaten down by life, quite the opposite of the actor’s best-known roles as tough-talking gangsters, confident authority figures or canny intellectuals like the insurance investigator of Double Indemnity, released just a year earlier.
Scarlet Street’s story is ideal noir territory:
It’s a dark night. Walking alone to the subway after his testimonial dinner, Chris races to the aid of a woman being smacked around on a rain-soaked street. She is Katherine “Kitty” March, sexy in a clingy party dress. She immediately comes on to the stubby, aging, courtly man. Her emasculating, manipulative air and staccato voice raise a warning flag. Suspicions are further aroused when she misdirects a street cop hailed by Chris; Kitty claims her assailant ran one way when we know he went the other.
Dan Duryea's Johnny a Scheming Pimp
Chris is so desperate for affection that he buys into her sudden “interest” in him. Kitty bulldozes him into buying her a drink and he then lets her believe he’s a famous painter. In fact, he’s a hopeless amateur. (Later she tells her scummy boyfriend Johnny, “He’s too dumb to be a phony.”)
For her part, Kitty vaguely claims to be an actress whose show just closed. Yeah, right.
Cross pursues her, finally admitting he’s married – which doesn’t faze Kitty one bit. Johnny sees Chris as a meal ticket for them both and insists she date him.
Inevitably, Kitty begins to squeeze money from the middle class Chris. He contemplates embezzling from his firm, then steals bonds squirreled away by his shrewish wife, Adele. The poor sap eventually does steal from his employer to set up Kitty in a huge apartment doubling as his art studio. The tension grows as Kitty and Johnny try to hide their relationship from him.
The film's twists range from predictable to contrived. Among the more absurd turns is when Chris’ amateur artworks begin fetching huge prices after becoming the darlings of an influential art dealer. Problem is, everyone is misled as to who really painted them.
Famed Screenwriter Dudley Nichols Adapted Scarlet Street
Scenarist Dudley Nichols (The Informer, Bringing Up Baby, many others) gets in a few colorful touches of his own. For example: a Greenwich Village artist declares one of Chris’ paintings lacks "perspective.” Later, Chris admits that's "one thing I never could master.” The moment drips with double meaning for the clueless cashier.
The oversexed Kitty, who likely is a prostitute, admits a preference for bad boys like Johnny, her probable pimp. Their sex life is a constant reference point. Roommate Millie tells Kitty that since she met Johnny, “you couldn’t get to work on time.”
When Kitty tells Johnny, “I don’t know why I love you so much,” he has a curt, snide response:
“Oh yes you do.”
And throughout the picture, when he’s not hitting her, Johnny calls Kitty “Lazy Legs,” another hint as to her actual profession.
Joan Bennett's Kitty: Somebody's Psych Dissertation Waiting to Happen
In contrasting the timid Chris with the brash Johnny, Kitty whines, “If he (Chris) were mean or vicious or if he’d bawl me out or something, I’d like him better.” Nowadays, Kitty would be described as masochistic with low self-esteem. Back then, she was just a tramp.
And as if mere sexual suggestion isn’t enough, Lang goes graphic, dressing Bennett in tight, form-fitting dresses and, in one scene, stripping her down to a clingy slip. Pretty race stuff for 1945.
Familiar faces in the cast include silver-haired Sam Hinds as Chris’ work colleague – a year away from playing Jimmy Stewart’s ill-fated father in It’s a Wonderful Life; and Margaret Lindsay as Kitty’s cynical roommate, Millie.
The film’s final two scenes play pretty hokey today and seem to exist solely to satisfy the Breen censorship office, which always insisted that in the movies, crime must not pay.
One fun aspect of the movie is how it winks at Robinson’s real-life interest in art; he was an avid and expert collector for many years.
Scarlet Street immediately followed Fritz Lang's excellent noir The Woman in the Window, which starred the same three leads. All told, Joan Bennett made five pictures with Lang, unusual because the difficult German director was unpopular with most of his actors.
Sources:
- Imdb.com
- Tcm.com
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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