Scarlet Street (1945) on Netflix
Approved19451h 42mDramaFilm-NoirThriller
Christopher Cross, a cashier who paints in secret, endures his wife Adele's contempt. He rescues Kitty March from a drunk, and her boyfriend Johnny Prince sees a chance to profit.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb7.7/1021,662 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Christopher Cross has spent twenty-five years as a cashier, and his employer marks the anniversary with a gold watch. Walking home through Greenwich Village in his tuxedo, he sees Kitty March being attacked and knocks the man down with his umbrella. Kitty takes him for a wealthy painter, and he is too embarrassed to correct her. At home his wife Adele, who idolizes the policeman she was married to before, mocks his painting. The man on the street was Johnny Prince, Kitty's boyfriend, short of money; he urges Kitty to feign affection for Chris and swindle him. Smitten, Chris rents Kitty an apartment he can use as a studio, taking bonds from Adele and cash from his employer to pay for it.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Scarlet Street (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- New York's state censor board banned Scarlet Street outright in January 1946 under a statute covering films deemed "obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious" or likely to corrupt morals or incite crime; a week later Milwaukee's film commission banned it too, under police pressure for stricter regulation of undesirable films.
- Fritz Lang came up with the title "Scarlet Street" in a brainstorming session with screenwriter Dudley Nichols, producer Walter Wanger and star Joan Bennett, taking it from Revelation's description of the Whore of Babylon as "the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet," though he did not know its exact meaning.
- Ernst Lubitsch had persuaded Paramount to buy the rights to Jean Renoir's 1931 French film La Chienne, and after no one at the studio knew what to do with the property, Fritz Lang and screenwriter Dudley Nichols bought the rights "very cheaply" from Paramount and moved the story from Paris to Greenwich Village.
- Fritz Lang was refused permission to film the exterior scenes in Greenwich Village, so Universal built sets for Scarlet Street on its backlot instead.
- The paintings that appear in Scarlet Street were created by artist John Decker, and twelve of them were sent to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City for exhibition in March 1946.
