FRITZ LANG (in Hollywood)

Got a copy of Ministry of Fear, given the Criterion treatment.

Saw the three featuring Joan Bennett recently, Man Hunt, The Woman in the Window, and Scarlet Street.

In Man Hunt it confused me why Walter Pidgeon as the British "Captain Alan Thorndike" did not have the appropriate accent - I was kind of expecting that to come up later as a plot point, but no, it was just that Pidgeon didn't bother with an accent. But then Joan Bennett did attempt a cockney accent...............

Watching Dan Duryea in the other two films led me to think Jon Lovitz modeled his pathological liar character "Tommy Flanagan" from SNL on Duryea's chiseler characters here. Same voice/inflection.

I thought it was a goof that Edward G. Robinson does a double take when he sees Duryea as a doorman at the end of Woman in the Window but imdb says it's "incorrectly regarded as a goof." I say the point's arguable.

Always love when Greenwich Village is portrayed in old films such as Scarlet Street as being full of painters and subterranean Italian restaurants. Were that it were like that today.

Ranking:

The Woman in the Window > Scarlet Street > Man Hunt

man, Scarlett Street is SO much better than Woman in the Window... twist ending is promising but given up too soon I think!

EGR just going monkeymode on Joan Bennett with the icepick in Scarlett Street is some of the most brutal and violent shit I've seen in any classic Hollywood film

I like SS but WITW is more realized. I haven't seen either in years, though.