Scarlet Street (1945) (b/w)

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A box-office hit (despite being banned in three states), Scarlet Street is one of legendary director Fritz Lang’s (M, Metropolis) finest American films. When middle-aged milquetoast Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson, The Stranger) rescues street-walking bad girl Kitty (Joan Bennett, The Woman in the Window) from the rain-slicked gutters of an eerily artificial back-lot Greenwich Village, he plunges into a whirlpool of lust, larceny and revenge. As Chris’s obsession with the irresistibly vulgar Kitty grows, the meek cashier is seduced, corrupted, humiliated and transformed into an avenging monster before implacable fate and perverse justice triumph in the most satisfyingly downbeat denouement in Hollywood history. Dan Duryea (Larceny), as Kitty’s pimp boyfriend, skillfully molds “a vicious and serpentine creature out of a cheap, chiseling tin horn” (The New York Times). Packed with hairpin plot twists and “bristling with fine directorial touches and expert acting” (Time), Scarlet Street is a dark gem of film noir.