Scarlet Street (1945)

Captivating movie !

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I hate nihilism. I absolutely hate it. There is no point to it other than to mire the viewers into a bleak, depressing scenario for two hours and rub their face in the dirt. This is exactly how I felt as I watched Scarlet Street, an ugly nasty little film that shows the worst in humanity and forces the audience to identify with and sympathize with a psychopath.Don't be fooled into thinking that it's a film noir. It's not a noir by any stretch of the imagination. In a noir, the male protagonist is always a sympathetic figure because he is usually an otherwise intelligent man who is minding his own business before a scheming femme fatale comes along and preys on his vulnerabilities. In this movie, the woman isn't a femme fatale at all, and the man isn't a victim. Chris is a sociopath and stalker who develops a fatal attraction for Kathy. Right from the get go, he insists on pursuing Kathy, even though he's married, she's young enough to be his daughter and she is way out of his league. He's so desperate to have her that he lies about his marital status and suggests he's a painter. In no way does she lead him on; he pursues her in spite of her showing little interest.The movie tries to play Chris off as a dupe who was preyed upon by Kathy, but no; Chris is an idiot who keeps stalking her and ignoring all the gigantic red flags that she has no interest in him and has begun taking advantage. There are several occasions in which her boyfriend, Johnny Prince, shows up at her place and he suspects that there might be something going on between the two. But he just willfully ignores the obvious and keeps pursuing her.It gets worse! There's a pivotal point in the movie in which Chris is so unbelievably stupid and pathetic, you can't feel anything but disgust for him and lose whatever sympathy you would've otherwise had. He learns that Kathy has been gaining fame and fortune in the art world by passing off his paintings as hers. Again, here is another gigantic red flag that she's been playing him. What does he do? Does he give her the big kiss off? No. He actually decides to give her credit, because according to him, he is a "loser". What???Just when things couldn't get any worse, this happens: Chris finally catches Kathy in the act and realizes that she's been in cahoots with her thug boyfriend Johnny the entire time to screw him over. What would've been the perfect revenge plan? Out her as a total fraud, rake in the millions and laugh in their faces. Does he do that? No. He kills her! Absolutely nothing about this makes sense, not even as a "crime of passion." The movie tries to cheat to explain his motive by doing two things: first, by getting Kathy to react to him in a completely over the top, hostile way. Second, by implying that he went through so much trouble ditching his wife, only to have Kathy laugh in his face. No, no, no! Chris didn't go through any trouble to ditch his wife; in fact, the solution to his marital dilemma was practically handed to him on a silver platter. To make matters worse, Kathy had just been walked out on by Johnny, who not also slapped but threatened to kill her. So why on earth would she have been cruelly mocking Chris out of loyalty and love for Johnny? In the words of the great Spock, "Illogical!"The movie later ends with Chris a mentally ill homeless person, with a parting shot of the painting he made of Kathy being sold for $10K. There's supposed to be a sense of tragic irony to it all, but how? When you get down to it, Chris wasn't a hapless victim of a femme fatale. He was a crazy sociopath who obsessively pursued a random woman he met one night. This was a woman, I might add, who kept dropping hints that she didn't want anything to do with him because he was married. So, there was nothing ironic or tragic that happened to him. He did this all to himself.What frustrates me the most about Scarlet Street is that I can tell that the movie originally started off being completely different, as some kind of romance about two people in terrible relationship situations who finally find true love. Also, there was the additional theme of a failing artist who finally finds success via an ironic twist of fate. Yes, this original version of the movie would've been saccharine but it would've made a much better film. Why the writers switched gears and tried to make it into a nihilistic movie is beyond me (I guess they thought it would make the film edgier and deeper?). In any event, it was a huge mistake. The decision to change the film resulted in a movie that wound up being a bad ripoff of The Blue Angel, had no likable characters whatsoever and probably left a bitter taste in everyone's mouths because of how dark and nihilistic it was.1/10

(Flash Review)A bank cashier, with a heart for painting, who is stuck in a drab marriage breaks up what he thought was a street mugging of an attractive lady. He befriends this woman who had ulterior motives for keeping in contact. Based on her false assumption of this man's true profession and financial stability, she begins to persuade him to give her money for her and her secret boyfriend. How long will this go on? Will the cashier uncover her true motives and how will his depressive life effect any reaction he may have if the truth comes out? This story was well-written, edited, paced, acted, and effective use of cinematography. It also used some unexpected effects at key moments. A prime example of great Film Noir.

Enjoyable performances and entertaining movie. I liked this movie, but I am surprised it was made in 1945. The quality of the film made it feel like it was from the 1930's but that is explained by IMDb. I purchased the DVD so it is in my collection now. The audio quality overall is good enough to understand the dialog, but has a metallic sound up to about the middle of the film in the copy I have. I think the point of the ending is insightful and psychologically true for many decent people who are not meant to take a wrong turn but they do, which is what film noir Hollywood movies are about.

This film was okay. The plot was good, it had a lot of iconic points to it and it kept your interest. It really showed how women are just as manipulative and sly as men are and that men can get pushed around in a marriage just like women can. It was pretty iconic with the role changes with Chris is completely head over heels for Kitty and lets her play him. There were a lot of flaws to this movie, though. The lighting was awful. The screen was either too bright or too dark or there would just be a blob of light right in the center. It could get pretty annoying as you were watching the film. The camera work was pretty good, though. There was a lot of perspective. The shots were from a lot of different angles and characters. You could get more than one point of view during the movie which made it more interesting to watch. The acting was very good, too. All the actors played their characters very well. Each were very convincing and could really get you into the feel of the movie. Sometimes you could look at the scene and just ask yourself, "Why is she doing that?!" Not a bad watch, overall.