Fritz Lang directs Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea in this film noir where a beautiful grifter thinks she has sunk her hooks into a wealthy artist only for her unwitting meal ticket to be a henpecked salary man who paints as a hobby.

So many narrative curveballs. Could easily be an Ealing comedy if it wasn’t for its hard boiled setting and disturbing denouement. Lang has oodles to say here about masculinity. A landscape where the aged and the corrupt are both cowards yet a “bad” girl’s only choices. Bennett is playful and smoking as the honeytrap. Streetwise but bamboozled by the big picture. Jeepers! I enjoyed this so much for a hundred little reasons, looking forward to revisiting it already.

8

Perfect Double Bill: The Woman In The Window (1944)

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