5 Star

Fun, Fights and Make-ups.

Robert Siodmak (The Killers, The Rough and the Smooth, Treasure of the Aztecs) was one of the masters of the Film-Noir genre (period 1944–54) along with the likes of Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder. He brings us a thick script and tight angles on the leading man and the femme fatale along with the man everybody wants to hate. Close the curtains, make the room dark and enjoy an afternoon of tension.

The huge car park of the Round-up club and bar and two people meet in the dark, a stolen moment from prying eyes and ears, but they do meet and you know something isn’t right. Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster, The Train, Birdman of Alcatraz, Conversation Piece, Twilight’s Last Gleaming) and Anna (Yvonne De Carlo, The Ten Commandments, Band of Angels, McLintock!) can’t keep apart even though they were once married and now separated by more than the space between them. They are both trying to avoid Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea, The Woman in the Window, Lady on a Train, Black Angel) a nasty dangerously jealous man.

This rotten line of work. The rotten class of people you have to put up with. Good evening, Good evening folks. Table for four. HUH! Follow me.

They are at a party at the Round-up thrown by Slim. Something big is going down tomorrow and Steve doesn’t want Anna to be anywhere near anybody connected with it (later).

Anna and Steve broke up a year ago, and he went off to drown his sorrows while taking odd jobs in Chicago, and Oklahoma and later when he thought his head was clear he came home to take care of the family home. It doesn’t take his old friend Lieutenant Pete Ramirez (Stephen McNally, Winchester ’73, Apache Drums) long to find him.

I finally got her out of my system, didn’t want to see her.

But fate has a way of intervening even with Steve getting his old job back at Horten’s Armoured car service (you can see where this is going). Everybody except Steve can see that he is still obsessed about Anna, but she is out of reach as she is now married to Slim Dundee.

Well you know how it is. He is divorced, but he’s still got her in his bones.

Criss Cross is a classic Film-Noir from the heart of the era with Lancaster getting his teeth into his roll of a man fated to go down the dark hole of fickle fate.

Criss Cross is available on Blu-ray

 

BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

New 4K digital restoration from the original camera negative
Uncompressed LPCM monaural audio
Optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature
New audio commentary by film author Lee Gambin and actress Rutanya Alda
New audio commentary by film scholar Adrian Martin
Screen Director’s Playhouse radio adaptation from 1949, featuring Burt Lancaster
Isolated music & effects track
Theatrical trailer
A collector s booklet featuring new writing by film historian Kat Ellinger; an essay by Adam Batty; archival writing and imagery