Rent Criss Cross (1949)

Smoke and Sunlight - Criss Cross review by CH

Flashback. It is a familiar technique which is not as easy to use as might appear - whether in book or film. How does one carry the reader and viewer along? The question comes to mind again throughout Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949).

Written by Daniel Fuchs from a Thirties novel by Don Tracy (recently reissued by Stark House Press after decades out of print), the film takes a while to get (and even keep) going: this is a case of establishing that Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo were previously involved and that in his two years’ absence she has taken up with another man, the wonderfully creepy gangster Dan Duryea. He is not best pleased to chance upon this apparent tryst but is persuaded by Lancaster’s riffed explanation that he has a foolproof heist plan: a waylaying of the money-laden vehicle he drives for a living.

Duryea accepts this and so Lancaster is obliged to put into action this flawed notion. So episodic a narrative has one querying its implausibilities time and again, not least a trussed-up departure from a hospital, but the best scenes, including the smoke-filled raid upon that very vehicle, bring to life a vanished Los Angeles.

Mention Yvonne DeCarlo and it’s likely that The Munsters will be mentioned in reply. And rightly so. The shame is that, appear in so many films as she did, very few of them are a patch on Criss Cross which sometimes finds Siodmak close to his finest.

Meanwhile, as for an armoured car robbery, be sure to see Richard Fleisher’s 1950 film of that title which almost matches his The Narrow Margin (1952).

Très Noir. - Criss Cross review by Steve

One of the most gorgeous low budget films ever made. Not just the photography but the editing, lighting and set design. You could take a random still and paste it into a book of photography to represent the look of film noir and its melancholy beauty. Whether the decorative stars, its interiors in deep focus or the stunning location shots of Los Angeles.

It's a star vehicle for Burt Lancaster as an armoured car driver who has drifted back into LA to be sexually manipulated by his gorgeous ex-wife (Yvonne De Carlo) who plans to marry a gangster (Dan Duryea). The broken, doomed security guard offers his services to the mob as the inside operator in a heist.

The story is mostly told in layers of flashback, and seems influenced by Out of the Past (1947), with the pessimistic dialogue, the style of De Carlo's costumes and the gloomy, tainted romance of the lovers lost on the wrong turns of the lonely roads of noir. This is not the equal of Jacques Tourneur's classic, but exceeds it in visual artistry.    

The production code insisted that nothing will end well. But there are hints that America is moving out of postwar austerity; Yvonne works in a prosperous department store and Burt literally carts bundles of money around... Robert Siodmak assembles each scene with formidable craft. The plot is standard noir. But this is so beautiful.