Fritz Lang directs Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Raymond Massey in this thriller where a college professor and a mysterious beautiful woman have to team-up and cover-up when they murder an important man in self-defence.

An early Film Noir; full of tense set-pieces and a few decent twists. Lucky for us that Edward G. Robinson is such a likeable star (intelligent and authoritative) as his character as written performs plenty of incriminating mistakes. He’s such a bumbler that it makes you want to tie the noose yourself for him sometimes. Joan Bennett is glamorous, hot and sympathetic as the thoroughly decent femme fatale. There are wobbles (Robinson really should be prime suspect after his behaviour, I’m not sure how I feel about the eventual studio-mandated solution) but this is Hitchcockian fun told with Lang’s more pessimistic visual pragmatism.

7

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