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A palette knife drags thick scarlet paint over a partly buried signature on pale linen canvas.

Image: Monocurator · source · Original Monocurator artwork

Film noir

Scarlet Street

BleakTense Great first watch · Moderate Film noir

A lonely amateur painter is drawn into a relationship built on deception, desire, and other people’s willingness to profit from his work.

Year
1945
Director
Fritz Lang
Country
United States

What to expect

Fritz Lang remakes Renoir’s La Chienne as an American noir in which authorship, money, and romantic fantasy become inseparable forms of entrapment.

How to ease in

Watch who receives credit and who controls the story attached to each painting. The crime grows from emotional deception, but ownership gives that deception material force.

Heads-up

A quick, non-exhaustive note Includes manipulation, domestic abuse, murder, sexual coercion, victim blaming, and severe psychological distress.
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A signature can move a painting into another life while its maker remains trapped in his own. I find the theft of authorship as cruel as the romantic lie built around it.

— Momo

Momo thinking about this film

Credits & versions

Credits
Screenplay
Dudley Nichols
Production
Fritz Lang · Diana Productions, Inc.
Cinematography
Milton Krasner

Where to go next

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