Thursday, August 8, 2013

Criss Cross (1949)

Director: Robert Siodmak                             Writer: Daniel Fuchs
Film Score: Miklós Rózsa                            Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea and Stephen McNally

Yvonne De Carlo’s career had a very strange trajectory, beginning with some good roles in films noir, including Brute Force and Criss Cross. In addition to numerous westerns in the nineteen fifties, she also played Mrs. Moses in The Ten Commandments and by the mid-sixties was mired in TV’s The Munsters. Still, after what would seem like career suicide, she continued working steadily, on into the nineties. Her highly stylistic way of acting fit well in the noir films she did with Burt Lancaster. In the opening of this film we see De Carlo and Lancaster embracing in the parking lot of a nightclub. The owner of the club is Dan Duryea and his wife is . . . Yvonne De Carlo. The plot continues to unfold in a similar fashion. An argument between Lancaster and Duryea turns out to be a ruse to throw the cops off a heist being planned, and when the driver of the armored car has to go home to his sick wife there is Lancaster taking his place.

It’s a nice script, and after the opening the bulk of the story is told through a flashback with Lancaster doing the voiceover. Once the two timelines catch up, the heist careens toward the conclusion. The way that director Robert Siodmak guides the viewer through the intricacies of it all shows why he was so revered as a noir director. The most prevalent motif in the picture is that of the prison bars. They show up on the door when Lancaster goes in to the back room of the club to fight with Duryea, when the armored car is driving out of the bank, and at the train station. The daylight scenes in post-war Los Angeles are great too, every bit as noir as the dark and shadowy rooms usually associated with the genre.

Lancaster is as steely-eyed as ever and does a great job. It’s one of his best performances in a noir film after The Killers with Ava Gardner and I Walk Alone with Kirk Douglas. De Carlo’s strange acting style really works in this film because it’s so difficult to tell who she is or what she actually wants. Her love/hate relationship with Lancaster is a rollercoaster for the first half of the film and it’s difficult to figure out where her allegiance lies until the very end. For once a director reigned in Dan Duryea and he actually delivers a watchable performance. I really don’t like him much, but in this role he is measured and attenuated and adds so much more menace to the part than his usual petulant wise guy character. Stephan McNally has the thankless job of playing the good cop, trying to help out Lancaster and getting little thanks for it. Percy Helton is cast slightly against type as a bartender, and does a nice bit. And in the dance scene De Carlo’s partner is an uncredited Tony Curtis.

An interesting aspect of the film is how it can be seen as a transition of noir into more documentary style caper films like John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Another important part of the film is the powerful score by Miklós Rózsa, who is the composer most associated with great film noir. The film was remade in 1995 as The Underneath, with Peter Gallagher reinterpreting the Lancaster role as a reluctant participant in the heist rather than the originator of the idea. Criss Cross is a masterful and confident noir from Universal and has a lot to recommend it.

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