The Woman In The Window (1944) Fritz Lang uses virtually
the same cast in this drama as he did in the noir thriller, Scarlet Street . You've got Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and most importantly Dan Duryea.
Back in the forties, if you wanted that whole "film noir" cachet, you hired
Duryea, usually as a smooth talking hood. Such a pedigree would seem to be a
pretty good indication that we're going to see of all those film noir themes
we've grown to accept as being pretty much real life - man lead astray by sexy
broad is destroyed by her. This particular effort seems to be striving for
that sort of vibe, but Fritz actually has something else up his sleeve. And by
that I mean, the cop-out ending.
Now, we've seen plenty of old movies where the ending was compromised so that
the bad guys got punished and other sensibilities weren't offended (without
thinking too hard, The Blue Dahlia comes to mind). Those are obviously cop-out endings of a sort, but the kind
of cop-out ending we've got in The Woman In The Window is one usually reserved for bad horror movies, so it was surprising to see it
in this movie. I suppose that some people probably weren't bothered by it,
because the main character (Edward G. Robinson's Professor Richard Wanley) was
a nice guy that kind of got sucked into a bad situation through no real fault
of his own, but the ending cuts short a lot of the drama we had spent the last
hour and half simultaneously anticipating and dreading. You end up feeling
robbed, not because everything you were watching turned out to be false, but
because you didn't get to see it played out to its natural conclusion.  In fact, the movie would have been infinitely more powerful and memorable if it
had ended about two minutes before it did, when it switched into The Wizard of Oz mode (and they do nod in the Wiz's direction when Wanley encounters the hat
check guy and the doorman at the very end of the film and seems to recognize
them from somewhere else). Your enjoyment of this will thus depend on your tolerance for such last
minute shenanigans. I don't have much patience for crap like this in these
types of movies. A lot of horror movies that pull this stunt are all about
distorting reality and playing games with you. Dramas with dames, dopes, and
Duryeas seek to portray a regular Joe's life spiral into the crapper until
everyone pays the inevitable price of a moment's flirtation, so I find these
trick endings to be enormously irritating in these films.
Professor Wanley teaches at some college and when we see him in the classroom
(the only time in the whole movie, but he still ends up with a promotion in
between killing a guy with scissors and covering up the crime) he's babbling
about murder or something. Then he goes off to his club where he hangs out
with his two best friends, a doctor and the district attorney, Raymond Massey.
(We all remember his patrician air in such films as Things To Come and Possessed. ) Ray spends his time pretty much showing off for his two buddies by giving
them inside information about the big murder case he's working on. Anyway, they talk about what most middle-aged loser guys talk about - how
they're middle-aged losers. Wanley is restless in his wussiness, but his two
buddies tell him that old dogs like him need to stay on the porch and not try
and run with the big dogs. This is all happening right when Wanley's wife and
2.5 kids are going out of town for a few days. He professes that he's going to
miss them and all that, but like all guys that are tied down to a suffocating
family, he walks that fine line between playing up that he's going to miss them
terribly, but not so much that they (Shudder!) cancel their trip. With them
out of his hair, he is free to cut loose. (His doctor buddy wants to know if
he's going to take in a burlesque show. I would've said something like, "well,
if you're prescribing that as my doctor, I think it would be foolish to ignore
that advice. Now, how often should I be getting lap dances?")  Wanley is a homebody, so the riskiest thing he's going to do is stare at a
picture in a window. It's a picture of a mysterious, dark haired dame and you
know that in a movie like this, that is the riskiest thing a man could ever do
when his wife and kids are out of town. (Remember all the boring trouble that
Ray Milland got into when his wife and family were vacationing in West Virginia
in The Big Clock ?) Wanley stands there admiring the portrait when suddenly he sees a
reflection in the window of the woman that modelled for the painting. He turns
and she and he trade semi-flirtatious comments about whether he was going to
whistle at the painting of just look at it solemnly (she decides that he would
have whistled in a solemn manner) and as every guy in the audience knows, any
time some model gives you the time of day, you could be standing there with
your wife, her mother and father, your seven kids, your boss, your priest, and
your uptight next door neighbor and somehow you would still end up back at her
apartment for drinks.
Back at this woman's apartment (her name is Alice Reed), they chit and they
chat and they have some drinks and you can tell that Wanley is starting to
trick himself into believing that even though he has the face of a bulldog, is
some boring old college professor and probably really likes his family, that he
is back to being one of those big dog studs that young, hotties might really be
interested in. I should note that Alice Reed (Joan Bennett) is not portrayed
as your typical film noir skank. She is upfront with Wanley that she isn't
interested in him and that she only wants to show him some sketches at her
apartment (riiiiight). Throughout the film, she never double crosses him,
doesn't engineer any of the problems he finds himself in, and she doesn't treat
him with anything other than openess and kindness (I should have known there
was something fishy about this movie when there wasn't any scene of a woman
laughing in Wanley's face about what an old, ugly, dull man he was). So what exactly is their predicament? It's name is Frank Howard. He's the
big, burly boyfriend of Alice that shows up at her house when she and Wanley
are there together. He gets pissed at her, bitchslaps her, and when Wanley
interferes, he tries to choke out Wanley. Wanley fights for his life and
reaches out with his hand for something to defend himself with when guess who
shows up with a handy pair of scissors? Next thing I know, Howard's suit is
ruined, his big, dead carcass is getting rolled off of Wanley and Wanley and
Alice are trying to figure out what to do with one dead boyfriend.  A scheme is rapidly hatched whereby Wanley will give Frank's corpse a lift out
into the country and dump it there. Then they will never see each other again,
forget they ever were involved in a scheme to cover up Frank's death and that
will be that. Except for a couple of things. First of all, it turns out that
Frank isn't really Frank, but a dude named Claude who is a really important
businessman. Second, it seems that Claude had a bodyguard that trailed him
wherever he went. Third, when Wanley goes to dump the body, he leaves all
kinds of evidence at the scene. Fourth, the D.A. is one of those guys that can
unravel an entire convoluted scheme with only the scantiest of clues. It would
seem then that there is trouble on the horizon for Wanley and Alice. If you
wonder what sort of form that trouble will take, do I even need to mention that
the bodyguard is a disgraced cop that was kicked off the force for blackmail
and that he's played by Dan Duryea?
The movie had me hooked until the ending and I debated my various personalities
over whether I thought the fact that the ending was a monumental cheat meant
that I didn't like the movie. I mean, is it right to dislike a movie even
though you liked 97 out of 99 minutes? Well, shoot yeah! Those last two
minutes wiped out everything that went before and wiped out everything I liked
in this film. But I don't hold it against good old Fritz. (Who am I to argue
art
with the guy who made M?) And the more I think about it, the more I think the ending can actually be
justified. You just need to reorient your expectations of this film. Don't go
in thinking it's a film noir or anything like that. What Fritz is giving us
here is the visual embodiment of a man's conscience. Wanley is a happily
married family man, but like most of those neutered losers, he can't help but
wonder where the thrills, the excitement, and probably the sex are in his life.
All guys have a need to think that they are a little dangerous and so they
start to think and fantasize about some excitement.
That's what is going on here. Of course in really goody-goody, repressed types
like Wanley, it isn't too long before all those dangerous fantasies have dire
consequences. This is because Wanley feels guilty for having these doubts and
feelings about his boring old family (Family game night again? YESSSSS!) and
his mind tells him that he should appreciate what he has, because wanting
anything beyond what you have is disastrous, and by the time the movie ends, he
knows this. If you look at it as a psychological study of a man trying to come
to grips with his own pointless existence, then it is quite well done and
effective. But it would have been so much sweeter if all of this really went
down they way they played it. Murder, suicide, infidelity, cover-ups,
blackmail, paintings of hot dames - that's the kind of real-life living big
dogs like me pour themselves a nice tall cup of every day!
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