Criss Cross (1948)

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Directed by Robert Siodmak.

Starring Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Burt Lancaster, Richard Long, Stephen McNally.

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Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) returns home after a few years of knocking around the country following his divorce from good-time girl Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Getting his old job back driving an armored car, and not even convincing himself that he's making a new start, he also wants his old wife back. When he finds Anna, he quickly learns that she is involved with gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). Nonetheless, they carry on a clandestine affair, with Steve foolishly believing that Anna will return to him. Even after she marries Slim, Steve, with her encouragement, masochistically clings to this doomed obsession. So when Slim catches them together, Steve ad libs plans for an armored car robbery that includes Slim. The two rivals form an uneasy and untrusting collaboration, but Steve and Anna plan to double cross Slim. However, the title of Robert Siodmak's film noir gem is, not incidentally, Criss Cross. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide

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Criss Cross
by JimBell in JimBell Blog

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"Criss Cross (1949) emphasizes the “femme fatale” element in classic film noir. A handsome young man (Bert Lancaster) returns to L.A. and looks up the woman to whom he was briefly married (Yvonne De Carlo, who died January 10, 2007). When they are caught by her current husband, the gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), young Steve suggests a “job” robbing the armoured car company for which he works. It all ends badly. Although this film was nominated in 1950 for an Edgar award as Best Motion Picture, nowadays we see some problems with the black and white classic. In the first few minutes, Yvonne De Carlo seems to overact badly, prompting vicious thoughts such as “She saw Casablanca and is now imitating an actress acting.” But soon the acting evens out, and there are fine understated performances by the bartender, the villian (Dan Duryea), and others. Also giving us problems is the key concept underlying the film: obsession. It is difficult for us to ... " [More]

Review by All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

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Criss Cross doesn't quite live up to the standard of director Richard Siodmak's enduring noir classic The Killers, but the film is nonetheless full of the stylish atmospherics, sly plot twists, human frailties, and fatalistic attitudes that defined the genre after World War II. The film certified Burt Lancaster as one of the stars of the genre. In retrospect, Lancaster doesn't fit in with the hardboiled protagonists of Siodmak's films: he's too clean, too sincere, too nice, and perhaps that's why he branched out into different roles in the 1950s. Co-star Yvonne De Carlo also seems slightly inappropriate for the material, though she definitely looks the part of the femme fatale. The overall mood of the film, based on Don Tracy's novel of the same name, is aided by the ominous black-and-white cinematography by Franz Planer and the mercurial Miklos Rozsa score. Criss Cross was somewhat faithfully remade by director Steven Soderbergh in 1995 as the flawed but interesting The Underneath. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide

Tags: noir , armoredcar , betrayal , doublecross , exwife
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