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

The music score by Miklós Rózsa intensifies the hard-edged aspect of the film,
especially, for example, when unscrupulous Kitty (Ava Gardner) gets arrested by the
police and gets criminally implicated in front of her dying husband.
Despite the obvious similarities between the two films, Criss Cross still stands as
one of the best noir films by Robert Siodmak. As the story’s narrator, the central
protagonist is Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) who returns home to Los Angeles after
having spent a rather long time away. The irresistible attraction of the Rondo Club where
he meets his ex-wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) leads him to a sequence of events that he
cannot control: “It was in the cards. No way of stopping it. (...) It was fate”. Eager to
rekindle their relationship, Anna marries nonetheless the small-time gangster Slim Dundee
(Dan Duryea). In an anxious attempt to win her back, Steve leads Dundee into an armoredtruck
payroll heist and thus initiates the act in which he is the major victim.
Figure 80. Criss Cross
This combination of credulity and deceitfulness (a noir movie which is filled with
obsessive love and betrayal) is extremely significant throughout the film as it helps to
define Steve’s own actions. When, for example, he is pursued by Dundee whom he has
betrayed, he tries to escape with Anna. While using a rather ingenious scheme, he manages
to bribe one of Dundee’s men to take him instead to their “meeting” at the beach house (a
typical noir location). In this apparently immature situation, Anna is dismayed by Steve’s
naive attitude and she rashly packs her things up and tries to escape to save herself and the
304