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Criss Cross (1949)
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TYPE OF FILM: Noir
STUDIO: Universal
PRODUCER: Michael Kraike
DIRECTOR: Robert Siodmak
SCREENWRITER: Daniel Ruchs
SOURCE: Criss Cross, novel by Don Tracy
RUNNING TIME: 87 minutes
PRINCIPAL PLAYERS:
Burt Lancaster…………………………………………………….………………Steve Thompson
Yvonne De Carlo……………………………………………………………………..Anna Dundee
Dan Duryea…………………………………………………………………..……….Slim Dundee
Stephen McNally…………………………………………………………………Lt. Pete Ramirez
Tom Redi……………………………………………………………………………………Vincent
Percy Helton……………………………………………………………………………….…Frank
Alan Napier…………………………………………………………………………..……Finchley
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DID YOU KNOW?
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Mark Hellinger, the gifted journalist and short story writer, went to Hollywood to write screenplays and produce movies, quickly becoming a master of the noir film. He produced The Killers and had begun to put together the talent to make Criss Cross, based loosely on Don Tracy’s novel of the same name. Unexpectedly, Hellinger had a heart attack and died at the age of forty-four, cutting short what was destined to be a great career.
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THE STORY
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Armored-car guard Steve Thompson, once married to Anna, is still in love with her, though she’s left him for Slim Dundee, a gangster and owner of Slim’s, the nightclub where Steve and Anna had so many happy evenings. The fire apparently reignites for Anna as well, until they are caught together at Dundee’s beach house. To explain his presence there with Slim’s wife, Steve tells him of an elaborate robbery plan that he’s been working on and was hoping to learn if Dundee wanted to be in. As Dundee questions Steve more intensely about the details of the planned robbery, Steve finds himself locked into a scheme that he had never wanted in the first place. No one is telling the truth. Steve plans to take all the money and run away with Anna. Slim plans to kill Steve during the robbery. Anna just wants the money.
Steve’s partner is killed during the robbery, and he is wounded while killing two of Dundee’s cohorts. Steve wakes up in a hospital, a hero for having killed two gangsters who tried to rob his armored car, while Anna has absconded with the money. One of Dundee’s men takes him to Anna’s hiding place, only to have Slim walk in on them and kill them both.
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One of the greatest of all noir films, Criss Cross utilized every convention and brought all the perfect talent together to make it memorable. The sense of hopelessness is emphasized by a long flashback with its moody voice-over. Audiences recognize that flashback is useful in this dark universe only because there is no future. The beautiful woman who betrays the man (who is totally captivated by her) is another staple of the noir film, and Yvonne De Carlo fits right in with Veronica Lake, Ava Gardner, and Lizabeth Scott when it comes to turning men into mush. Burt Lancaster, of course, made a career out of going against type. A big and muscular man, (who had been a trapeze artist), tough to the core, lost all his spine when it came to bad women. He starred in such noir classics and near-classics as The Killers (1946), Desert Fury (1947), Brute Force (1947), I Walk Alone (1947), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Kiss the Blood off My Hands (1948), and All My Sons (1948). Lancaster, much like other tough guys of film noir who gave up everything for the wrong woman (only Robert Mitchum ranks with Lancaster in the sucker category), could have as his epitaph the sad and frustrated line he speaks to De Carlo at the end of Criss Cross: “I never wanted the money,” he tells her. “I only wanted you.”
Robert Siodmak, the director, made so many memorable films noirs in the brief period from 1944 to 1949 (Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Suspect, The Dark Mirror, The Spiral Staircase, The Killers, Cry of the City, and The File on Thelma Jordon, as well as Criss Cross) that, as the genre became less popular, he found it difficult to find work in other forms and returned to his native Germany, his career largely over.
Tony Curtis (billed as James Curtis) made his screen debut as Yvonne De Carlo’s dance partner.
Criss Cross was remade in 1995 as The Underneath, starring Peter Gallagher, Alison Elliott and William Fichtner in a stylish but slow-moving update.
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BEST LINE
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Lt. Pete Ramirez, speaking to his doomed friend, Steve Thompson; “I should have been a better friend. I should have stopped you. I should have grabbed you by the neck. I should have kicked your teeth in. I’m sorry, Steve.”
