Fate, Desire, and Inescapable Will: The Noir Aesthetic of Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross 1949
Robert Siodmak is the unheralded master of noir, and Criss Cross 1949 can be considered his crowning achievement. Eddie Muller called the above shot where De Carlo looks directly into the camera ” noir’s defining moment.” They have the potential to be happy, and Lancaster is willing to forget the money if they can be together, but she just can’t let it go. Their fate is irrevocably sealed as they drift towards the nihilistic ending, and despite a handful of playful moments, Siodmak never lets up on the heavy, oppressive atmosphere.
“ Its pleasures are so subtle and so sublime you almost have to earn your way to this film, which deserves its place on any list of top 5 noirs of all time. The structure is complex and engrossing. Every facet of the filmmaking is superb. The cast is perfect, from stars to bit players – it has one of Miklós Rózsa’s most haunting scores, and the whole thing is realized by director Robert Siodmak in a way that makes the viewers feel they’re dreaming the story rather than having it told to them. “ – Eddie Muller
Criss Cross 1949 stands as a testament to Robert Siodmak’s mastery of the film noir aesthetic. One of the genre’s most influential stylists, honed from his German Expressionism roots, Siodmak fashions a visual language of composition and camera work that is, as Eddie Muller calls it, ‘ominous yet graceful.’
His expert manipulation of light and shadow, a hallmark of his expressionistic style, transforms ordinary settings into suspenseful landscapes. Consider Phantom Lady 1944, The Killers 1946, and Cry of the City 1948. Three of his most potent noirs, which are on my list of the best film noir, helped define the visual vocabulary of the American crime thriller.
Ella Raines in Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady 1944.
Victor Mature and Richard Conte in Siodmak’s Cry of the City 1948.
According to French film critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, who wrote the influential book A Panorama of American Film Noir, Siodmak’s complex understanding of human nature “ demonstrates… that even within the framework of film noir, we’re in the presence of one of the finest psychologists of the screen.”
Robert Siodmak’s ability to infuse each scene and weave complex, non-linear stories with a sense of unease and moral ambiguity through purely visual poetry demonstrates to me why he should be considered one of the most influential directors of the noir era.
Siodmak’s films, like Criss Cross, reveal a keen awareness of what drives his characters. They often examine themes of obsession and betrayal within the gritty context of urban decay, and his brazenly bleak Criss Cross represents the height of a fertile and vibrant moment in film noir during the 1940s.
“ Criss Cross should have been the crowning achievement of producer Mark Hellinger, the flashy Broadway columnist who’d come to Hollywood in the late 1930s and taken the place by storm, producing some of the toughest and hard-boiled pictures of the early 40s – things like They Drive By Night, and High Sierra.”– Eddie Muller
Continue reading “Under the Radar: The Unseen Side of Film Noir Part 2: Criss Cross 1949”
