Burt Lancaster in this film reminds me of the Billy Joel song "Stiletto": "But you stand there pleadin'/With your insides bleedin'/'Cause deep down you want some more..." Like a lot of noir protagonists, he deserves it. My problem with "Criss Cross" is I never cared.
Is Steve just a sap, or is he a jerk? A lot depends on what is in the heart of the center of his affections, his ex-wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). When Steve returns to the old neighborhood after a long absence, Anna draws herself to him, then pulls away and marries a local crime boss just as Steve begins to respond. Then she reaches out to Steve again. If only they had money to get away. Did I mention Steve works as an armored-car guard, delivering bags of money?
De Carlo was a beautiful actress who didn't get the right parts, and that includes this. Is Anna genuinely conflicted, or just a tramp? Daniel Fuchs' script shortcuts the need for character depth by writing Anna both ways, and not expecting us to notice. The convenience of Steve's job also grates, as well as the film's flashback-dependent structure and logic-defying conclusion.
I understand why others regard this film more highly than me. Lancaster is a classic film star who looks marvelous here. Director Robert Siodmak, who collaborated so well with Lancaster in the earlier noir "The Killers", employs interesting angles and textures to communicate a visual freshness unusual for early postwar cinema. Dan Duryea is a sleek and sturdy villain with a refreshingly snide sense of humor.
Three sequences are standouts. One, taking place in a hospital, dramatizes the adage: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Another involves planning a big heist, with Anna and Steve's smoldering relationship as subtext and suspense point. "You're going to need a cover story" Duryea's Slim Dundee is told, and thus distracted from watching his wife and her ex-husband a moment longer than he should.
Finally, the heist itself is well shot, a boldly paced shootout with layers of tear gas substituting for the fog you get in other noir films. But "Criss Cross" is not at its heart a heist film but a love-gone-wrong film, and that's what goes wrong here.
Okay, Steve's a lunkhead, and his core issue: "He's divorced, but he's still got her in his bones" is one a lot of guys can identify with, but other than looking great together, Lancaster and De Carlo give us no reason to see what Steve sees, why he betrays family and friends. If De Carlo had more ambiguity to play with, that might have been effective, but here it's just that she's one person one moment, another the next.
Too often we idle around Steve's mother's house or a bar where Steve is pestered by a well-meaning cop friend, who's got it all figured out but can't seem to do a thing to protect Steve. Expositional dialogue runs amuck, which shouldn't happen in a movie loaded with flashback. The crooks even discuss their heist plans loudly in an alley behind the bar where they could be overheard by anyone, just to fill us in.
Siodmak has an eye for real-life detail a lot of people respond to, but this time, unlike "The Killers", he only has half a story and a psychosis to work with. "Criss Cross" has a classic noir title but it's almost too apt here.
Is Steve just a sap, or is he a jerk? A lot depends on what is in the heart of the center of his affections, his ex-wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). When Steve returns to the old neighborhood after a long absence, Anna draws herself to him, then pulls away and marries a local crime boss just as Steve begins to respond. Then she reaches out to Steve again. If only they had money to get away. Did I mention Steve works as an armored-car guard, delivering bags of money?
De Carlo was a beautiful actress who didn't get the right parts, and that includes this. Is Anna genuinely conflicted, or just a tramp? Daniel Fuchs' script shortcuts the need for character depth by writing Anna both ways, and not expecting us to notice. The convenience of Steve's job also grates, as well as the film's flashback-dependent structure and logic-defying conclusion.
I understand why others regard this film more highly than me. Lancaster is a classic film star who looks marvelous here. Director Robert Siodmak, who collaborated so well with Lancaster in the earlier noir "The Killers", employs interesting angles and textures to communicate a visual freshness unusual for early postwar cinema. Dan Duryea is a sleek and sturdy villain with a refreshingly snide sense of humor.
Three sequences are standouts. One, taking place in a hospital, dramatizes the adage: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Another involves planning a big heist, with Anna and Steve's smoldering relationship as subtext and suspense point. "You're going to need a cover story" Duryea's Slim Dundee is told, and thus distracted from watching his wife and her ex-husband a moment longer than he should.
Finally, the heist itself is well shot, a boldly paced shootout with layers of tear gas substituting for the fog you get in other noir films. But "Criss Cross" is not at its heart a heist film but a love-gone-wrong film, and that's what goes wrong here.
Okay, Steve's a lunkhead, and his core issue: "He's divorced, but he's still got her in his bones" is one a lot of guys can identify with, but other than looking great together, Lancaster and De Carlo give us no reason to see what Steve sees, why he betrays family and friends. If De Carlo had more ambiguity to play with, that might have been effective, but here it's just that she's one person one moment, another the next.
Too often we idle around Steve's mother's house or a bar where Steve is pestered by a well-meaning cop friend, who's got it all figured out but can't seem to do a thing to protect Steve. Expositional dialogue runs amuck, which shouldn't happen in a movie loaded with flashback. The crooks even discuss their heist plans loudly in an alley behind the bar where they could be overheard by anyone, just to fill us in.
Siodmak has an eye for real-life detail a lot of people respond to, but this time, unlike "The Killers", he only has half a story and a psychosis to work with. "Criss Cross" has a classic noir title but it's almost too apt here.