Dangerous encounter

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Movie
German title Dangerous encounter
Original title The Woman in the Window
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1944
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Fritz Lang
script Nunnally Johnson
production Nunnally Johnson
music Arthur Lange ,
Hugo Friedhofer (without mentioning)
camera Milton R. Krasner
cut Marjorie Johnson
occupation

Dangerous encounter (original title: The Woman in the Window ) is an American film noir by the director Fritz Lang from 1944. It is based on the novel Die Frau im Fenster (Original title: Once Off Guard , later: The Woman in the Window ) by J. H. Wallis .

action

Richard Wanley, a distinguished professor, falls in love with a painting of a young woman on display in the window of an art gallery . When he met Alice Reed after visiting his club while looking at the portrait, he accompanied her home. There he is surprised by Alice's lover, businessman and millionaire Claude Mazard, who jealously pounces on him and tries to strangle him. Wanley kills Mazard in self-defense with scissors. He and Reed agree to cover up the murder, and Wanley hides the body in a nearby wooded area.

When removing the body, however, numerous mistakes are made and traces are left behind: Wanley drops the coin at a bridge with a toll station and has to laboriously look for a new one. In this way the bridge guard can memorize his vehicle. In the woods, Wanley leaves tire tracks and footprints that are later found by police. He tears his suit on a barbed wire in the forest and injures himself, so that the police later find bits of cloth and traces of blood. Since he cannot go far enough into the forest, the body is soon found by boy scouts.

After Mazard is found, Wanley's friend, District Attorney Frank Lalor, takes over the investigation into the case. Wanley notices how the clues about his person are thickening, he becomes insecure and keeps making reckless remarks that draw suspicion on him.

In addition, he and Reed are blackmailed by Mazard's convicted bodyguard, Heidt. He knows about the murder and collects evidence in Reed's apartment, including the victim's pocket watch, in order to put the two under pressure. Reed and Wanley can raise the required amount of money, but decide to kill Heidt in order to rule out possible future blackmail. When the plan to poison Heidt fails, Wanley sees no way out and takes an overdose of sleeping pills.

The case, however, takes a surprising turn when Heidt, who had been wanted as a witness until then, is shot dead by a police officer in self-defense after he has left Reed's apartment. In his pockets you can find Mazard's watch, which leads the police to conclude that Heidt is the wanted murderer. Reed calls Wanley to tell him about it, but Wanley is already dying.

At this point in the film, Wanley wakes up in an armchair in his club. It turns out that it was all just a dream: the clerk at the cloakroom looks like Mazard, the club porter like Heidt. Shortly afterwards, when he was approached by a woman when he looked at the portrait again, he ran away in panic.

background

Dangerous Encounters was the first production by the independent film studio International Pictures Inc., which the screenwriter Nunnally Johnson had founded a year earlier.

The film is based on the novel Once Off Guard by J. H. Wallis, which was renamed in later editions analogous to the film title The Woman in the Window . The final scene or dream resolution, which does not exist in the book, was contrary to popular opinion not imposed by the Hays censorship authority, but was part of Lang's intention. Lang said one end of the film, which was about the suicide or the execution of the professor, was too defeatist for him: "A person would be caught and punished for a murder that he committed in a single moment of lack of control."

The premiere took place on November 3, 1944. The film was first shown in the Federal Republic of Germany on July 20, 1950. It is also known under the titles Die Frau im Fenster or Die Frau am Fenster .

In 1945, Fritz Lang worked again with Edward G. Robinson , Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea for Street of Temptation .

criticism

Dieter Krusche writes Hazardous encounter was a "well-staged and well played film in which once again -. How often a person is pursued by a relentless fate at Lang" In his "sinister consequence" and its stylistics it were in Hazardous meeting to a film noir, although many critics would have resented the end of the film. Cornelius Schnauber refers to the year 1944, in which such an open discussion of the depths of desire was still impossible, which is why Lang switched to the dream motif. "Up to this surprising final scene, however, we experience everything very real, so that nothing changes for the viewer in the innermost desires of the otherwise well-behaved citizen and his possible involvement in a crime."

"Profound criminal entertainment [...] With a masterly command of the formal means, Fritz Lang describes the inevitable, bad fate of a respectable citizen. The ironic closing punch gives the psychologically balanced film another turn. "

“The film lacks that last bit of seriousness and consistency. He wants to show the audience the tools of torture (which are often used mercilessly in other Fritz Lang films): a sympathetic hero on the way to his misfortune, his fateful mistakes, hopeless entanglement - and then again and again in unmotivated dissolutions To be pleased on the way. That makes Dangerous Encounters an interesting variation in Lang's oeuvre, which certainly has a lot to do with screenwriter and producer Nunnally Johnson, but the film is not one of his great masterpieces. "

- Ekkehard Knörer, Jump Cut Magazine

Awards

literature

  • J. H. Wallis: Once Off Guard. EP Dutton, 1942 (EA). The Woman in The Window. World Publishing, 1944 (WA).
  • J. H. Wallis: The woman in the window. Orell Füssli, Zurich 1961 (2nd edition).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicholas Smedley: A Divided World: Hollywood Cinema and Emigré Directors in the Era of Roosevelt and Hitler. , 1933–1948, Intellect / The University of Chicago Press, Bristol / Chicago 2011, p. 113.
  2. ^ Dieter Dürrenmatt: Fritz Lang - life and work . Basel 1982, p. 142 .
  3. Dangerous Encounters in the Internet Movie Database .
  4. ^ Dangerous Encounters in the American Film Institute Directory , accessed March 2, 2013.
  5. a b Dangerous Encounters in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  6. ^ Dieter Dürrenmatt: Fritz Lang - life and work . Basel 1982, p. 141 .
  7. ^ Dieter Dürrenmatt: Fritz Lang - life and work . Basel 1982, p. 142 .
  8. Review by Ekkehard Knörer on Jump-cut.de, accessed on March 2, 2013.