CRISS CROSS: Blu-ray (Universal-International, 1949) Shout! Factory

A fatally toxic relationship is at the heart of director, Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949); a hard-hitting noir melodrama, co-starring Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo as Steven Thompson and Anna, with an able assist from everyone’s favorite noir baddie, Dan Duryea (a.k.a. Slim Dundee). Steve loves Anna. Anna loves Steve…well, sort of. Steve was once married to Anna. Problem: Anna’s now wed to Slim, but wants Steve back. Worse, Slim knows this and isn’t willing to let Anna go. Taking full advantage of its seedy/sunny Los Angeles locales, including memorable vignettes near the tunnel at Hill Street, the moth-eaten Sunshine Apartments overlooking Angels Flight funicular, and, Union Station, Criss Cross is also noteworthy for a fleeting glimpse of a very young, and, soon-to-be fifties’ heartthrob, Tony Curtis (billed as Anthony Curtis), performing a sultry rhumba with Anna in a sweaty and smoke-filled nightclub. Producer Mark Hellinger had been responsible for bringing this property to Universal-International; albeit, with considerably different ideas about the trajectory of its story. Thus, herein we pause a moment to acknowledge Mark Hellinger who, due to a congenital heart condition, would not live to see Criss Cross reach the screen. Expelled from his formal education at the tender age of 15 for organizing a student strike, and paying his dues as a waiter/cashier in Greenwich Village in order to be near ‘theatrical’ folk, Hellinger soon landed a job writing for Zit's Weekly, a theatrical publication, and, his springboard to a career as a reporter at New York Daily’s city desk.  

A true renaissance man who marched to the beat of his own drum, Hellinger took a news/gossip assignment and transformed it into a literary grab-bag that earned him many fans and resulted in a daily featured spot. Migrating to the New York Daily Mirror, Hellinger kept his hand in the arts, penning sketches for the Ziegfeld Follies, writing plays in his spare time, co-authoring a screenplay, publishing magazine articles, and, producing two collections of short stories.  By the late 1930’s, Hellinger’s reputation preceded him. He was a syndicated columnist in 174 newspapers, a distinction that brought him to Warner Bros. as a writer/producer. There, his seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of talent continued to augment and enhance Warner’s ‘ripped from the headlines’ cinematic style. Wooed, first to Fox, and finally Universal, and, given his own production unit, Hellinger’s clear-eyed interest in a ‘then’ newcomer would make Burt Lancaster a star in The Killers (1946). Hellinger’s last personally supervised picture, The Naked City (1948) was released barely three weeks after his untimely passing, age 44; astutely described by New York Times critic, Bosley Crowthers as a ‘virtual Hellinger column on film’ and ‘his appropriate valedictory.’  Having already laid plans for Criss Cross, the picture was nearly derailed by Hellinger’s sudden demise; the baton, eventually picked up by producer, Michael Kraike, who thereafter allowed director, Siodmak, and screenwriter, Daniel Fuchs, to begin reshaping the material into their kind of story. So, gone was Hellinger’s concept of a racetrack heist gone bad. In its place, the plot morphed to involve a cleverly orchestrated ambush of an armored car. But this would prove a mere sideline, meant to augment the fatalism in this lover’s triangle. Reportedly, Lancaster abhorred these changes but held little sway to influence the shoot as it unraveled from page to screen. And thus, a bitter – if quiet – tug-o-war between Lancaster and Siodmak began.

Criss Cross opens with a breath-taking aerial view of downtown Los Angeles, the helicopter-anchored camera moving in closer and closer to a parking lot outside of a steamy nightclub where we first see Steve and Anna passionately locked in each other’s arms. He implores her to hurry back inside, and she makes him promise to stay true to the course of their ‘cryptic’ best laid plans made earlier. Returning to the club, Anna is confronted by her jealous husband, slick gangster, Slim Dundee. Meanwhile, Steve finds his way through the back-bar area, casually confronted by Det. Lt. Pete Ramirez (Steven McNally). Actually, Pete’s an old friend; one, with solid advice for Steve. Steer clear of Slim and his motley entourage. They are bad news. But Steve, ever ego-driven and with a reputation to uphold, refuses to listen to reason. And so, not long thereafter, he and Slim get into a bit of a skirmish in the club’s private dining room that ends with Steve disarming Slim of a switchblade. Or is this just an act? As not long after Pete’s attempt to question the suspects about what actually happened results in a dead end, we find Steve, Slim and the rest of Slim’s posse outback, washing up and discussing plans to stage an armored car heist. In his mind, Steve contemplates how it all began.

This leads us into a prolonged flashback; Steve, arriving home in L.A. after some time away, working the oil fields and other dead-end jobs after the break-up of his marriage to Anna. Exactly how these two were ever wed in the first place remains a mystery. For certain, the relationship was fraught with problems. No one in Steve’s family cared for his wife; not his mother (Edna Holland) or younger brother, Slade (Richard Long). Nevertheless, it does not take Steve long to return to the nightclub where he and Anna first met – predictably, finding her in the arms of another man being sashayed around the dance floor. Interestingly, the man dancing with Anna is actually not the one who has brought her to the club. And Anna, having set aside her bitterness in their failed marriage, is actually glad to see Steve again. Indeed, she still has a home fire burning for him. Steve plays it cool and cagey – at first. Anna introduces Steve to Slim – her beau…well, sort of. And although she insists there is not a lot going on between them, after barely a few flirtatious dates with her ex, Anna instead runs off and marries Slim – much to Steve’s chagrin. Bitter, Steve gets his old job as an armored car driver back. Almost immediately upon saying ‘I do’ to Slim, Anna discovers she has walked into a colossal trap. Slim mistreats and manhandles her. So, Anna throws herself at Steve’s mercy, claiming to have wed Slim merely out of spite. Steve is the ever-devoted and marginally chivalrous kind. Arguably, this clouds his better judgement. So, after Anna comes to Steve’s mother’s house to plead her case, the couple’s passionate reunion is interrupted by Slim and his boys, waiting for them in the front parlor. To deflect suspicion, Steve claims to have sent for Anna to act as his go-between.

Now, Steve proposes a heist to Slim with him as the ‘inside man’ on the job. Slim is, at first, unimpressed. Nobody has ever successfully held up an armored car. Only Steve has it all planned out. He gets one of the accompanying guards to prematurely go home, presumably to tend after a sick wife, moments before the car is to be loaded with its cash bags. The remaining guard, Pop (Griff Barnett) is edgy; his concerns marginally abated by Steve’s nervy confidence everything will turn out alright. As planned Slim and his men ambush the armored car with clouds of obfuscating smoke and gas. In the ensuing struggle, Pop is mercilessly gunned down by Slim, whom Steve wounds in the leg, though not before he too is shot in the shoulder.  Having deliberately ‘botched’ the robbery, Steve is taken to hospital; hailed as a hero for wounding the robbers, even if part of the payload remains unaccounted for, so far, Steve’s plan to criss cross Slim has worked like a charm. Only Pete has unraveled the secret behind the robbery. Although he cannot prove anything, Pete tries to reason with Steve as a friend – to turn over what he knows to the police and let them take things from there. His pleas fall on deaf ears.  Now, Slim sends one of his goons, Vincent (Tom Pedi) to collect Steve from the hospital by force. Instead, Steve bribes Vincent, promising him $10,000 if he will drive him to his prearranged rendezvous with Anna at the beach house. The offer sticks, and Vincent takes Steve to the beach house. Alas, once alone with Anna, Steve realizes she never intended to remain his girl. She only wanted the money. Besides, in his weakened state, how far does Steve think he can get? Too late, the lovers discover they too have been crisscrossed by Vincent; Slim, arriving to confront and kill Anna and Steve. The movie ends with their murder.

Criss Cross did respectable business at the box office, but was not a darling of the critics, who described it as ‘tedious and plodding’, ‘verbose, redundant and imitative.’ Arguably, Criss Cross was too dark a tale to be fully appreciated in its own time – even, as a post-war noir thriller. Despite this reputation, time since has been kind to Criss Cross; today, regarded as one of the seminal noirs about obsessive love and betrayal. Stylistically, the picture has a lot going for it, thanks to Frank Planer’s evocative cinematography and Daniel Fuchs tightly-paced screenplay. In hindsight, what Criss Cross sorely lacks is narrative impetus. We are allowed into the lives of these deeply disturbed parasites who continue to bump into each other with indifference and contempt. Oddly, this acrimony is never entirely whipped into a fervor for sin and corruption. The staged armored car heist gets the noir juices flowing with its smoky gas-filled fog transforming a seemingly innocuous parking lot into a moody nether-world of spooky terror and exhilaration. But the sequence is book-ended by too much exposition and not enough of a build-up in raw tension. The finale to Criss Cross is a rather dull and foregone conclusion. We know Steve and Anna are doomed the moment Vincent arrives at the hospital to kidnap Steve. Steve’s bribe cannot prevent the showdown with Slim, even if Steve is naïve enough to think so. And Steve, regrettably, remains a real chump throughout Criss Cross – blinded by his obsessive passion for this black widow who leads him by the nose from one dangerous entrapment into the next.  What the movie lacks in plot it more than makes up with its moodily elegant style; the ‘double’ and ‘triple’ crosses, overlapping with an air of cynicism that is perhaps even more of a shocker than its dénouement.

Criss Cross arrives on Blu-ray via Shout! Factory’s ‘Select’ division, a more recent alliance with Universal Home Video. Previously, Shock Entertainment in Australia released a ‘region free’ bare bones Blu. I have to say that in comparing that release with Shout!’s 4K remaster here, there are a few discrepancies worth noting that, at least for me, set the Shock release above this disc. First, the Shock release is infinitely sharper than the Shout! Although contrast appears marginally richer (nee, boosted) on the Shock – resulting in deeper blacks and contrasty whites, the real transgressor on the Shout! reissue is untoward DNR, liberally applied to create residual softness. Shout!’s release lacks grain structure while Shock’s sports ample grain, looking indigenous to its source. Shout!’s disc eradicates the minor age-related dirt and debris present on the Shock and, overall, is brighter too, but these virtues are gained at the expense – overall – of homogenizing the image to the point where smoothness seems artificially induced. In motion, Shout!’s Blu is certainly no slouch, but it does look far less refined by direct comparison to the Shock disc. PS – the Shock disc is incorrectly labeled as ‘region locked’. It is actually, region free. Both discs sport a DTS 1.0 mono mix. Shout!’s North American reissue contains a new audio commentary by film historian, Jim Hemphill that is nominally engaging, though hardly comprehensive. We also get a theatrical trailer and stills gallery. Bottom line: I prefer the visual quality of the Shock to this Shout! Select release. Regrets. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

3.5

EXTRAS

2