Review: The Woman in the Window

Edward G. Robinson is a college professor of middle age, specialising in matters of the criminal mind. While his wife and kids (one played by a young Robert Blake) are away, Robinson meets and is infatuated with a model (Joan Bennett), who was the subject for a painting/mural outside a gentleman’s club he frequents. She’s in some trouble, and she’s about to drop the poor naïve fool in it, too. All because he couldn’t keep from having a wandering eye while the wife’s away. Tsk, tsk. Raymond Massey plays Robinson’s slightly condescending District Attorney friend, whilst Dan Duryea turns up late as a sinister blackmailer.

 

There’s few things I hate more in movies than when a film fails to stick the landing. This 1944 mystery from director Fritz Lang (“Metropolis”, “Man Hunt”, “Rancho Notorious”, “The Big Heat”) and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson (“The Grapes of Wrath”, “My Cousin Rachel”, “The Dirty Dozen”) is one such frustrating near-miss. Damn it, this thing was on its way to being rather good and then it concludes with the kind of ending I used to come up with for my short-ish stories as a pre-teen wannabe writer. I was frankly rather pissed off to be honest. Until then, the film is jolly good fun with a pretty solid cast, principally Edward G. Robinson and a typically scene-stealing Dan Duryea.

 

The mere sound of Dan Duryea’s voice in this will make your skin crawl. A subtle actor, no. An effectively slimy one nonetheless. Versatile character actor Robinson is a likeable presence on screen, though his character here sure seems like a putz for someone meant to be rather intelligent. In fact, that’s the other issue with the film: Everyone here acts like a dummy, and since when do D.A.’s allow their college professor pals to go see a crime scene with them? Still, based on a J.H. Wallis novel, the plot is classic noir/mystery stuff, and incredibly tense at times. As naïve as Robinson’s character appears to be, you can’t help caring about the poor guy. It’s almost as if he’s in the Fred MacMurray role from “Double Indemnity” instead of playing the boss. The music score by Arthur Lange (“Rancho Notorious”, “The Mad Magician”) is particularly excellent.

 

Unfortunately, containing one of the worst endings to a film in cinematic history, all of the good work comes to just shy of a recommendation, I’m afraid. It’s so bad that I think it cheapens the whole film and the characters within it. An initially gripping and engaging mystery falls into an embarrassing heap with a truly childish, insulting ending. There’s foreshadowing to set it up, but I dismissed it thinking no one would be dumb enough to go in that direction, surely. Welp, Mr. Johnson be dumb enough, I guess. Some might appreciate it in a darkly humorous kind of way, but I nearly threw my TV out the window. It’s an utterly regrettable conclusion to what was shaping up to be a flawed, but enjoyable film. Good performances, but so what? Watch “Double Indemnity” again instead. Supremely overrated, I expected a lot more from the esteemed Lang and Johnson.

 

Rating: C+