Themes: Dishonor Among Thieves, Bank Robbery, Femmes Fatales
Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Richard Long
Release Year: 1948
Country: US
Run Time: 98 minutes
Plot
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
Review
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
Bernard Herzbrun - Art Director, Boris Leven - Art Director, Yvonne Wood - Costume Designer, Robert Siodmak - Director, Ted Kent - Editor, Miklos Rozsa - Composer (Music Score), Bud Westmore - Makeup, Franz Planer - Cinematographer, Michael Kraike - Producer, Oliver Emert - Set Designer, Russell A. Gausman - Set Designer, David S. Horsley - Special Effects, Daniel Fuchs - Screenwriter, Don Tracy - Book Author
