Scarlet Street (1945)

What an interesting film Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street turns out to be after it starts off a kind of farce, with Edward G Robinson playing unhappily married Christopher Cross, a patsy beguiled and manipulated into financing the lifestyle of hs mistress, Joan Bennett's femme fatale Kitty March, but towards the end, things turn psychologically dark, there's a murder, and then the movie ends with unmistakeable references to the director's The Woman In the Window, the less capitivating film noir he released a year earlier with all the same actors, many of the same plot details, but one that you must watch in conjunction with Scarlet Street to appreciate the lighthearted apology being made.

★★★☆☆

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The Woman in the Window (1944)

In director Fritz Lang’s 1944 film noir full of great moments but dopey on the whole, a psychology professor played by Edward G Robinson has to dream up a way out of a terrible pickle when the woman whose portrait in a shop window he admires turns up in real life, invites him back to her apartment for a drink and before you can say, “What would your wife and kids think of this?”, the two become embroiled in murder, body disposal and blackmail!

★★☆☆☆ 

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