Scarlet Street Review

Scarlet Street (1945)

Edward G Robinson was one of the greatest actors during the Hollywood golden years.  His ability to play many different types of roles would surprise someone who only thought he played gangsters. 

Scarlet Street is an excellent film noir movie that has somehow been allowed to slip into the public domain.  It is therefore available from public domain publishers like Alpha or Kino, who specialize in preserving these old classics for a new generation of motion picture fans.

Film noir generally refers to movies that take a fatal view of life. They generally focus on criminal activity or somebody seeking something for nothing and usually have fate as an active participant. 

Film noir also introduced the femme fatale as a character – a woman who lures the protagonist on to his destruction seeming to offer herself as the prize but really she is only out for herself and gives nothing except scorn.

Scarlet Street has a very involved story that gets you interested from the beginning. We see a man getting his 25 year gold watch, then he decides to go home the long way, and that decision makes all the difference.  He comes upon a guy apparently robbing a woman and comes to her rescue, knocking the guy down with his umbrella. He runs for the cops but when he returns the woman says the guy fled.  What Robinson didn’t know was they were a pair – a hooker and her pimp and he was going to be taken for a ride that would destroy his life.

The initial meeting puts stars in Robinson’s eyes. He has been a doormat and never was given much respect. As they get acquainted you see the lies they tell each other and he mistakenly thinks the feelings he has are reciprocated. The lady (Joan Bennett) is only interested in getting as much as she can out of the little man with the least amount of work.  His hobby has been oil painting and her boyfriend (Dan Duryea) thinks they would be worth plenty.  She begins working to get them from him and soon has them in a local gallery – under her name as artist.  The rest of the film is just as interesting as you get to see how fate makes a monkey out of the little man and turns around and bites the two abusers, too.

The DVD is from Kino video and the movie is pretty well preserved black and white with a 103 minute running time.