The Woman in the Window

Fritz Lang
1944

Edward G. Robinson stars in Fritz Lang's celebrated noir as a mild-mannered professor, a performance which may be the most tame I've seen the old bulldog play to date (the witness boss in "Double Indemnity" ( 1944) comes to mind, but even that has an air of unemotional toughness to it). With the wife and kid out of town Professor Wanley finds himself in Joan Bennett's apartment. She's the subject of a painting Robinson and his pals at the gentlemen's club have been fawning over, and he makes her acquaintance against his better judgement, partly for bragging rights, and partly from enchantment. The party's crashed by a jealous lover which the team kills in self defense. Robinson goes from upstanding citizen to murder accomplice in a few brief moments. The film's strong suite is the tense Hitchcockian suspense (peppered with irony), that comes from an average man thrust into a dreadful and macabre situation. Not only is the body's disposal a harrowing experience, but through happenstance, the nerve-wracked professor is forced to return to the remote crime scene with a police detective friend who is completely unaware of his companion's guilt. The gleefully sinister noose-tightening on the lead is excellent, but unfortunately Bennett's performance is a bit wooden, and the terrible ending smacks of studio intervention. Clearly this film could have been cleverly ended without requiring Robinson's suicide, or the ever-cliched "it was all a dream" gag. I'm disappointed with this one considering it's reputation.