Movie Review - Scarlet Street (1945)
This post will have spoilers. You have been warned.
We toss around the word “tragedy” like we know what it means. A plane crashes, or an election doesn’t turn out like we hoped, or anything else undesirable that happens is a tragedy. These are often very sad events and I’m not trying to downplay their severity or loss, but we have other words for describing those times. Tragedy means something specific, and by losing sight of its true meaning we’ve lost an important type of story.
This weekend I watched Fritz Lang’s 1945 film noir “Scarlet Street.” I’m not sure why I was drawn to this movie. I’d never heard of it before. Edward G. Robinson, who I know best from his chewing scenery in “Key Largo” and other tough guy roles, plays Chris Cross, a sad, put-upon, man who once had dreams. He wanted to be an artist. He wanted to be loved by a young woman.
Instead, he took a mundane bank job and married a woman out of convenience. Respected by his peers, but despised by his wife, Adele (Roseland Ivan), Chris is profoundly lonely. One rainy night he rescues a beautiful young woman, Kitty (Joan Bennett), from an assailant and walks her home. She’s young enough to be his daughter, but he falls for her. Hard.
So begins the tragedy.
A true tragedy is a story (and life is a story– don’t let anyone tell you different), where the hero is brought to ruin by a chink in the armor of his otherwise good character. Like Chris, who we first see receiving a gold watch from his boss, the tragic hero starts off in a positive situation. Sometimes the hero’s fatal shortcoming is the inability to control his temper or ambition. Sometimes, however, it’s something more benign or even praiseworthy. Chris just wants to be loved.
Kitty will never love Chris. She has a boyfriend, Johnny Prince (John Duryea), and he was the guy beating her on the street when Chris “rescued” her. Chris oversold himself as a painter to impress Kitty, leading her and Johnny to think that he has more money than he does. Johnny hatches a plot to use Chris’s infatuation to their advantage, and Kitty is just pliable enough to go with it. Soon Chris is dipping into the till at the bank, and Johnny is selling his paintings under Kitty’s name.
That’s only the beginning of the unraveling of Chris’s life. Turns out, he really is a gifted artist. Kitty gets all the acclaim that should have been his, but he doesn’t mind, blinded as he is by love. When Adele’s first husband, thought dead, makes a sudden reappearance, Chris realizes that he’s not legally married and is free to pursue an honest romance with Kitty.
Though Chris is no longer bound to his wife, the object of his affection is an even more toxic woman. Like so many women in abusive relationships, Kitty is devoted to Johnny, and spurns Chris after he learns the truth about her relationship. So (spoiler), Chris kills her and unintentionally frames Johnny for the murder.
In a surprising subversion of the Hollywood Production Code, Chris actually gets away with the murder in the legal sense. While he loses his job for embezzling, it’s Johnny who goes to the electric chair. But in a twist that Edgar Allen Poe would have appreciated, Chris spends the rest of his days haunted by his actions and hearing Kitty’s voice saying, “Jeepers I love you, Johnny!”.
Chris could have had it all if he’d done things differently. He really was a great painter, who might have had riches and success if he’d tried. He wasn’t really married to his shrew of a wife, and might have found a wholesome relationship. He was an honorable man in a good career. And he lost it all by pursuing something good, the desire for love, in all the wrong ways.
That is a true tragedy.
When was the last time we saw a new tragedy at the movies? For generations raised on Disney movies and their like, where suffering is diminished and good people always follow their hearts to achieve their worthy desires, we find them distasteful. Unfortunately, that attitude has carried into real life. We need stories that remind us of our faults and failings, so that we can look up at the screen and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Scarlet Street is in the public domain and easily found online. For a restored print, the blu-ray is fairly cheap right now. Using this link will get me a little kickback, which is much appreciated: https://amzn.to/3ky5KAU