Movies - The Woman in the Window

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	Movies - The Woman in the Window

Directed by Fritz Lang, The Woman in the Window, a black-and-white film noir, is the story of psychology professor Wanley (Edward G. Robinson), who, meets and falls in love with a younger woman (the movie's femme fatale).

Wanley first sees the portrait of Alice (Joan Bennett) in a store-front window, and then meets the woman herself on the street. After committing murder in self-defense, he finds himself blackmailed by a slick criminal, played by Dan Duryea.

Based on J. H. Wallis' novel Once Off Guard, the film features not one but two surprise twists at the end. Scriptwriter Johnson started his own independent production company, International Pictures Inc., after writing some successful films such as The Grapes of Wrath
(1940) and other John Ford films, and chose The Woman in the Window as its premiere project. Lang substituted the suicide ending in Nunnally Johnson's script with a dream-ending, in order to conform to Production Codes of the time.

The term film noir originated in part because of this movie. The term "film noir", according to many, was first applied to American films in articles appearing in French film magazines in 1946, the year when The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity
(1944), Laura (1944), Murder, My Sweet
(1944), and The Woman in the Window were released in France.

The film also received a nomination for an Academy Award for Original Music Score.

Cast

As in Lang's Scarlet Street
released a year later, Robinson plays the lonely middle-aged man and Duryea and Bennett co-star as the criminal element. The film also stars Raymond Massey as a police detective and friend of Wanley.

Edward G. Robinson
as Professor Richard Wanley
Joan Bennett
as Alice Reed
Raymond Massey
as Dist. Atty. Frank Lalor
Edmund Breon as Dr. Michael Barkstane
Dan Duryea
as Heidt/Tim, the Doorman
Thomas E. Jackson as Inspector Jackson, Homicide Bureau
Dorothy Peterson as Mrs. Wanley
Arthur Loft as Claude Mazard/Frank Howard/Charlie the Hatcheck Man
Frank Dawson as Collins, the Steward

Quote from the film

Wanley (Edward G. Robinson): "There are only three ways to deal with a blackmailer. You can pay him and pay him and pay him until you’re penniless. Or you can call the police yourself and let your secret be known to the world. Or you can kill him."

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The Woman in the Window ]

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