Scarlet Street (Swedish title: Kvinna i rött, 1945)

US Kino Video DVD edition

Text below written 2018-12-10



Scarlet Street (Kvinna i rött) is one of the best movies genius Fritz Lang ever made, and the follow-up sequel to his genre classic
1944 The Woman in the Window, also with Edward G. Robinson, Dan "The Human Weasel" Duryea and with Joan Bennett as the
Femme Fatale. Dan Duryea mostly played the weasel guy in a lot of Film Noir movies and he was always GREAT, a genre icon.
Edward G. Robinson is an actor of collossus stature in the film history, i can't say much more than that, but three of my favourite films
with him are 1944 Double Indemnity, this 1945 film and 1947 The Red House by Delver Daves.

Regarding Joan Bennett, for me as a Dario Argento lover, she will always be Madame Blanc in Suspiria, the scariest film ever made
and her "She must vanish! She must die ..." and that ending scene will haunt me in my dreams as long as i love. Thanks Dario, Madame
Blanc and Ms. Tanner (Alida Valli) for having made me a fucked up horror film lover. Unfortunately it seems that 1940's huge star Joan
Bennett didn't want to acknowledge her part in Suspiria at all, a shame as Suspiria may be the greatest horror film ever made.

Back cover of the DVD

Scarlet Street:

Is a Feel Bad Noir with an outstanding performance from Edward G. Robinson as the middle-aged office worker, cashier Chriss Cross
dreams about being a painter, an artist, but he's a sad, miserable and pitiful man and bullied at home, married to Xanthippian wife,
Adele. One night when sees a young beautiful woman being harassed on the street by a thugish looking man, he intervenes and ....
he falls in love with her. Yeah, she may be beautiful but she's also vulgar and slutty and obvious, for everyone else than our foolish
Don Xuixote hero that is, she's also a street-walking prostitute.

Her name is Kitty (Bennett) and her pimp and boyfriend (Duryea) believes Chris to be a rich man, as foolish looser Chris, to impress
Kitty, has told her that he's a rich and successful artist. Everything spirals further into misery for poor Chris and the famous Feel Bad
ending is something special indeed, depressing even to be a Film Noir. Masterful work from Fritz.

This restored version is presented in it's 4.3 fullscreen original ratio, black & white, and with an audio commentary track with David
Kalat plus some picture galleries from i.a. deleted scenes. Scarlet Street is a re-make of french film La Chienne by Jean Renoir

 

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