SPOILERS** Fritz Lang had a reputation for stalking around the set barking orders through a megaphone, wearing breeches and riding boots and a monacle, the last of the great cartoons. At least he got the job done. "Woman in the Window" is pretty good noirish stuff. I say "noir-ish" because it's missing one of the principal icons of the genre -- the black snub-nosed .38 revolver. In it's conventional place we have some of Fritz Lang's ideosyncratic icons -- straw hats, mirrors, and scissors.
Robinson leads a rather stodgy life as an assistant professor at Gotham College. (Who is promoted to department head during the film. How do you do that?) He periodically gets together with two friends for dinner at his club, a doctor and the district attorney, Raymond Massey. One night after leaving the club he runs into Joan Bennett and accepts an invitation to her apartment. An enraged man rushes in and begins strangling Robinson who must stab him repeatedly with a pair of scissors in order to save his own life. Robinson and Bennett then weave the proverbial tangled web. Robinson disposes of the body in some woods north of New York. I should say "a densely wooded area" because that's where all dead bodies are found, including this one, by a Boy Scout who promises that if he gets the reward he will use the money to send his kid brother to Harvard and he himself will go to a GOOD college. (The script by Nunnally Johnson is intelligent and witty, one of the movie's better features.) The story is a big improvement over that of its companion piece, "Scarlet Street," if only because in the latter Robinson had to be an undiscovered genius in painting still lifes. And the paintings we see are sidesplittingly absurd. The acting and the ending in "Woman in the Window" also deserve a comment.
Robinson had more range than he's usually given credit for. One watches him in "Little Caesar," chewing the scenery, snarling, strutting, grinning idiotically, and the image is stamped on one's brain. But he could do other things as well, and sometimes quite nicely too. His last performance, in "Soylent Green," was one of his best. Joan Bennett was a competent actress, no more than that. She's not much of a femme fatale here, just ordinarily pretty. She lacks the kind of glandular ooze that someone like Gloria Grahame might have brought to the part. Raymond Massey is likewise professional. It's interesting to watch his expression change from scene to scene as he grows more suspicious of Robinson. Each time Robinson takes a step or opens his mouth he seems to drip more clues, and Massey picks up on each one, so that if his friendship with Robinson begins with a smile, it ends with a thoughtful frown. Dan Duryea is a slimier, venomous version of Bob Fosse in both appearance and movement, reed slender and sinister all the way.
The ending. It seems contrived and tacked on. It's as if someone had tapped the producers on the shoulder half-way through shooting and said you've only got ten minutes left to finish the film. So a minute after leaving Bennett's apartment, with his financial future fixed up and no charges against him, Duryea the blackmailer is told to stop by a policeman, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. The clock must have been ticking because this is completely unmotivated. It does serve the broader purpose of the story however in introducing irony. Duryea seems to have brought ruin to Robinson's life. And by the time of the shootout Robinson has already taken an overdose of something or other and is dozing off into the big sleep without knowing that his suicide is now unnecessary. (It's kind of complicated, I know, but I don't want to take up too much space except to explain that the murder committed by Robinson has now been pinned on the dead Duryea.)
But -- wait! There is a high-key closeup of Robinson's face going slack and slumping to the side. Is he dead? No -- he's asleep! A hand enters the frame and touches him on the shoulder, and someone says, "Professor, it's ten thirty." He'd fallen asleep in his chair at the club! Perhaps borrowing from "The Wizard of Oz," a shaken Robinson retrieves his coat from the man he murdered and says good-night to Duryea, the hotel doorman, before walking down the late-night street. He peers at the portrait in the window that started the whole business and a tarty woman's face appears in the reflection. She asks him for a light and he runs off, protesting, "Not on your life. Not for a million dollars!"
It's easy to make fun of a movie like this but it's actually kind of neat. Robinson is no crafty villain, and Joan Bennett appears to be an honest whore, less innocent than he but not at all evil. Everything they do is out of desperation. One feels sorry for both of them, especially Robinson who seems never to have had an impure thought. I didn't even mind the it-was-only-a-dream ending. Sure it's been done before, but it permits the film to end on a comic note, which comes as a relief after all the drama and suspense that has preceded it. Well worth watching.
Robinson leads a rather stodgy life as an assistant professor at Gotham College. (Who is promoted to department head during the film. How do you do that?) He periodically gets together with two friends for dinner at his club, a doctor and the district attorney, Raymond Massey. One night after leaving the club he runs into Joan Bennett and accepts an invitation to her apartment. An enraged man rushes in and begins strangling Robinson who must stab him repeatedly with a pair of scissors in order to save his own life. Robinson and Bennett then weave the proverbial tangled web. Robinson disposes of the body in some woods north of New York. I should say "a densely wooded area" because that's where all dead bodies are found, including this one, by a Boy Scout who promises that if he gets the reward he will use the money to send his kid brother to Harvard and he himself will go to a GOOD college. (The script by Nunnally Johnson is intelligent and witty, one of the movie's better features.) The story is a big improvement over that of its companion piece, "Scarlet Street," if only because in the latter Robinson had to be an undiscovered genius in painting still lifes. And the paintings we see are sidesplittingly absurd. The acting and the ending in "Woman in the Window" also deserve a comment.
Robinson had more range than he's usually given credit for. One watches him in "Little Caesar," chewing the scenery, snarling, strutting, grinning idiotically, and the image is stamped on one's brain. But he could do other things as well, and sometimes quite nicely too. His last performance, in "Soylent Green," was one of his best. Joan Bennett was a competent actress, no more than that. She's not much of a femme fatale here, just ordinarily pretty. She lacks the kind of glandular ooze that someone like Gloria Grahame might have brought to the part. Raymond Massey is likewise professional. It's interesting to watch his expression change from scene to scene as he grows more suspicious of Robinson. Each time Robinson takes a step or opens his mouth he seems to drip more clues, and Massey picks up on each one, so that if his friendship with Robinson begins with a smile, it ends with a thoughtful frown. Dan Duryea is a slimier, venomous version of Bob Fosse in both appearance and movement, reed slender and sinister all the way.
The ending. It seems contrived and tacked on. It's as if someone had tapped the producers on the shoulder half-way through shooting and said you've only got ten minutes left to finish the film. So a minute after leaving Bennett's apartment, with his financial future fixed up and no charges against him, Duryea the blackmailer is told to stop by a policeman, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. The clock must have been ticking because this is completely unmotivated. It does serve the broader purpose of the story however in introducing irony. Duryea seems to have brought ruin to Robinson's life. And by the time of the shootout Robinson has already taken an overdose of something or other and is dozing off into the big sleep without knowing that his suicide is now unnecessary. (It's kind of complicated, I know, but I don't want to take up too much space except to explain that the murder committed by Robinson has now been pinned on the dead Duryea.)
But -- wait! There is a high-key closeup of Robinson's face going slack and slumping to the side. Is he dead? No -- he's asleep! A hand enters the frame and touches him on the shoulder, and someone says, "Professor, it's ten thirty." He'd fallen asleep in his chair at the club! Perhaps borrowing from "The Wizard of Oz," a shaken Robinson retrieves his coat from the man he murdered and says good-night to Duryea, the hotel doorman, before walking down the late-night street. He peers at the portrait in the window that started the whole business and a tarty woman's face appears in the reflection. She asks him for a light and he runs off, protesting, "Not on your life. Not for a million dollars!"
It's easy to make fun of a movie like this but it's actually kind of neat. Robinson is no crafty villain, and Joan Bennett appears to be an honest whore, less innocent than he but not at all evil. Everything they do is out of desperation. One feels sorry for both of them, especially Robinson who seems never to have had an impure thought. I didn't even mind the it-was-only-a-dream ending. Sure it's been done before, but it permits the film to end on a comic note, which comes as a relief after all the drama and suspense that has preceded it. Well worth watching.