Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

To a great extent, Chris Cross embodies the sharp sense visible in film noir, namely the
sense of deprivation of power and influence that postwar veteran men felt when they
returned home only to realise that women had now occupied the workforce in unparalleled
numbers. At the same time, the scene above shows the dual view of masculinity, expressed
in the contrast between the timid clerk and the sleazy criminal, Johnny Prince (Dan
Duryea).
Film noir, in this regard, has always been perceived as a major confrontation with
the determining norms of masculinity in Hollywood productions. In this type of films, we
normally see representations of inflated male virility and the fixatedly out of control male
desire being transferred onto female protagonists. Yet, in Scarlet Street, Chris Cross
establishes an inversion of this conventional model of masculinity. A good example of this
is when Chris’s boss finds out about his intention to embezzle and asks him about his
possible reasons in a typically noirish way: “Was it a woman, Chris?” In this respect,
comparatively, one can find similarities of this derisive attitude in Walter Neff’s
confession in Double Indemnity: “I killed him for money – and a woman”. Scarlet Street is
interpreted by many critics, namely E. Ann Kaplan, as a model of patriarchy which
becomes inverted and weak due to a reciprocal cultural decline. The critic notes that Chris
himself is an evident indication of this lost patriarchy, adding that Chris’s “lack of
sufficient masculinity causes the ‘trouble’ in the narrative, and brings about his
destruction” (Kaplan 1998:43).
In conjunction with this kitchen item, there are other decisive symbols that express
the first signs of Chris’s violent behaviour and his irrationality. One is the huge cleaver he
uses when chopping a chunk of red meat he is holding in both his hands while his wife is
rebuking him. However, the cunning look in his eyes communicates the opposite this time:
his way of getting back his lost virility and arresting his emasculation. For the first time the
spectator gets sudden access to Chris’s emotions; a surge of anguish which translates into a
seething murderous anger. The other symbolic kitchen utensil that is going to be associated
with the other side of Chris’s personality is the ice-pick, which becomes the fatal weapon
in the film both for Kitty (fig. 67) and a signifier for himself since he makes the newspaper
headlines as “Ice-pick killer to die in chair tonight”. 81
81 These headlines (and the scene of the film) obviously remind us of the famous murder weapon with which
Leon Trotsky was killed back in 1939 (Ramón Mercader, a Mexican NKVD agent, buried a sharp steel icepick
in Trotsky’s skull), and which Lang would have known about. Finally, more recently, one could also
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