Tremendous thriller made by the German director Fritz Lang at the end of a very profitable decade in Hollywood, years which had already yielded Fury, You Only Live Twice, The Return of Frank James and Hangmen Also Die. Edward G Robinson gives a fine study in increasingly anguished desperation as the mild professor who becomes enmeshed in violence, murder and blackmail after a little innocent flirtation with a woman who resembles a portrait that has fascinated him. Robinson and co-stars Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea, here at his silkily treacherous best as the blackmailer, teamed again the following year with Lang for the equally remarkable Scarlet Street. Pity about the let-down ending, but Lang even manages to give this a little twist.


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