Flick Review < Scarlet Street | Fritz Lang, 1945

Kitty March: How long does it take you to paint a picture?

Christopher Cross: Sometimes a day, sometimes a year. You can’t tell. It has to grow.

Kitty March: I never knew paint could grow.

Christopher Cross: Feeling grows. You know, that’s the important thing, feeling. You take me.
No one ever taught me how to draw, so I just put a line around what I feel when I look at things.

Kitty March: Yeah I see.

Christopher Cross: It’s like falling in love I guess. You know… first you see someone, then it
keeps growing, until you can’t think of anyone else.

Kitty March: That’s interesting.

Christopher Cross: The way I think of things, that all art is. Every painting, if it’s any good, is a love affair.

Kitty March: I never heard anyone talk like that before.

Christopher Cross: There aren’t many people you can talk to this way. So you keep it to yourself.
You walk around with everything bottled up.

Director: Fritz Lang
Writers: Georges de La Fouchardière (novel) André Mouézy-Éon (novel)
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea
Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner

Is the first of two remakes Fritz Lang made of Jean Renoir’s films. Whilst La chienne (1931)
inspired “Scarlet Street” (1945), La bête humaine (1938) inspired Human Desire (1954).
Notoriously, Renoir disliked both.

Twelve paintings done for the film by John Decker were sent to the Museum of Modern Art
in New York City for exhibition in March of 1946.

Set up of Scarlet Street directed by Fritz Lang, 1945

Drawing by John Decker for Scarlet Street directed by Fritz Lang, 1945