Universal Pictures
Criss Cross is a 1949 film noir directed by Robert Siodmak about a gang of crooks attempting to pull off an armored car heist of nearly half a million dollars.
Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) has returned home to Los Angeles after drifting about the nation for two years disillusioned after the disintegration of his marriage to Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Anna has remarried to a local crime goon Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea) Soon Steve and Anna have rekindled their affair despite the lethal threat of Slim. Partly as a cover for their affair and partly to dissuade Slim’s suspicions, Steve concocts a plot with slim to rob the armored car company his works for with an intention to betray Slim and abscond with both the loot and the lady.
The film is a moderately decent noir marred by an intrusive and superfluous voice-over that, like Double Indemnity’s, seems to be the character recounting the events to a third party but without an actual third party to receive it.
Siodmak’s direction is sure and deft with creative and imaginative employment of rear screen projections the craft large spaces giving the impression of exteriors while maintaining strick studio control for cinematographer’s Franz Planer’s lighting and camera work.
Noted noir composer Miklos Rozsa fashioned the score but did not quite match his best work with the music sometimes as intrusive as the voice over.
The cast is uniformly good, portraying the conflicted and ultimately weak nature of the characters as they are consumed by their unrequited needs. While Criss Cross bears all the visual stamps of the noir style, more important to me the tone and theme of the story are true to the heart of noir, a dark cynical impression of humanity. Steve is trapped by his infatuation with Anna. While Anna and Slim are compelled by their respective flaws. The ending, dark, disturbing, and doomed is equally tragic and inevitable, paying honestly to the corruption in the human heart.
Playing as part of a Siodmak collection Criss Cross is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
