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

2.1.1.4 Conclusion
All in all, there is some pity in Lang’s noir vision of Chris Cross’s character, but a
touch of contempt as well. Although Chris is portrayed as childish, called ugly by Kitty
and ends up insane, Lang views his painting sympathetically. Christopher Cross’s
disintegration relies heavily on the dramatic dark psychology that is present in Scarlet
Street: that of an ugly man, with a sense of low self-worth. In other noir triangles, Cross /
Robinson would be the other man, the richer sinister (Conte, McCready, Laughton, etc)
more powerful figure who is the protagonist’s rival. The “lookism” in which Hollywood
deals is also made clear in this film, and it also indicates how classical Hollywood cinema
most often presented modern art as a sign of insanity, evil intentions, or the butt of a joke. 86
Both The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street are evocative of the Weimar
Street films with their middle-aged male protagonists obsessed with younger woman. In
both films Fritz Lang’s concerns with desire, violence and unstable identity are readily
perceptible. In the former, Edward G. Robinson plays the role of middle-aged psychology
professor Richard Wanley who sees the oil portrait of Alice Reed in a storefront window,
and then meets the dream image of a woman herself on the street, as she passes by and her
mirror-like image is reflected in the glass (fig. 78). After buying her a drink, she invites
him to her apartment to see some sketches made by the same artist. In an act of jealousy,
Alice’s lover Mazard (Arthur Loft) appears and attacks Richard. In self-defense, Wanley
stabs him with a pair of scissors, a desperate act that plunges him into the noir world of
murder, blackmail and deceit. For Scarlet Street, the parallelism is more than evident: the
same trio cast (Robinson, Bennett and Duryea) - though here we get to receive a more
intense message about the reticent morality of the middle-class - the same plot (that of a
middle-aged little man infatuated by a young woman who then murders a man); an
identical crime weapon (a pair of scissors and an ice-pick), and a similar ending - though
The Woman in the Window inserts a blatant cop-out finish, and Scarlet Street is implacable
in its gloom psychology, as Aaron Sultanik notes, “(...) the stark psychosexual drama of
Scarlet Street offers no moral alternative in its study of Robinson’s and America’s dark,
86
Chris’s bathroom “exposition of art” seems to contain hidden messages, inner meanings he himself cannot
verbalise.
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