User reviews

Good solid noir, with Burt Lancaster possibly running a little below best but Yvonne DeCarlo as the supreme femme fatale is in stomping form and more than makes up for any lapses from others. Gets going immediately and the aerial shot makes us well aware that this is going to be a beautifully shot movie, which it certainly is. Really great camera movement, especially during a stunning dance sequence, that includes an unaccredited Tony Curtis, and the heist itself with the surprising element designed to catch out Mr Lancaster. Good all the way through and if Lancaster sometimes appears a little lame it is probably because of the sheer ruthlessness of Dan Duryea as the chief baddie and the aforementioned DeCarlo who seems to be able to run rings round them all. Oh and what an ending!

It was only fitting that Robert Siodmak directed Criss Cross, as he had also directed the film's star, Burt Lancaster, in his first film three years earlier, and this one is Burt's farewell to noir and city suits, as he was about to begin his swashbuckling phase, and after that would don military uniforms and cowboy gear.

Criss Cross is basically a "big heist" movie, full of people double crossing one another with alarming frequency, and to such a degree that the story is often hard to follow. Yvonne De Carlo is the love interest, and Dan Duryea is an exceptionally nasty bad guy even for noir. The setting is L.A., and there is much excellent location photography that makes the movie a treat for people who want to see what the city looked like before half of it was bulldozed to make way for the highways.

There's nothing startling or especially new about this movie. It has a fine and somewhat eclectic supporting cast which includes Alan Napier and Richard Long, Steve McNally and Percy Helton. As in The Killers, there's a strong air of fatalism in the movie, more oppressive here, with a darker tone, and a more Germanic, almost Langian feeling of hopelessness.

1940's seedier side of Los Angeles makes a fitting noir background for this highly well made film noir starring BURT LANCASTER as the lovelorn hero foolish enough to go back to his ex-wife (extremely well played by YVONNE DE CARLO) who has taken up with a bunch of hoodlums headed by the sinister DAN DURYEA. True love never does run smooth, especially in this kind of fatalistic melodrama in which we have a hint from the very beginning of a dark conclusion.

The fact that Lancaster works for an armored car service is worked into the plot and makes for the movie's most suspenseful and action-filled moments. Some nice support from Stephen McNally as Lancaster's wise friend and Richard Long as his brother. Percy Felton does a standout job as an inquisitive bartender.

Robert Siodmak squeezes every bit of suspense as the story builds to a gripping climax. The hospital scene is extremely effective as Lancaster becomes aware of the dangerous situation he's in.

Lancaster displays some vulnerability and sensitivity despite his rugged good looks and has one of his best early roles here, even more impressive than he was in THE KILLERS. Miklos Rozsa's superb background score gives a jagged edge to the suspense.

Any lover of B&W film noir is guaranteed to find pleasure in this one.

Trivia: If you watch real closely, you'll spot the young Tony Curtis as de Carlo's dance partner in the crowded nightclub scene.

Wow! Criss Cross was a blind purchase for me. I really had never read much about it until I decided to give it a try. While I was hoping to be entertained, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it this much. Burt Lancaster has never been a favorite of mine. In fact, other than The Killers, I can't think of another role of his that I've so completely enjoyed. He's wonderful in this movie. As for Yvonne De Carlo, the only other thing I remember seeing her in was the television show "The Munsters". And, while she may not be the greatest actress of all time, she's very good here. I never pictured Lily looking like this. As for Dan Duryea, he's a great baddie. Mannerisms, speech, and the rest of the package just ooze with sleaze. Together, and with the help of an excellent supporting cast, they're great.

As for the movie, it's a very entertaining noir with plenty of twists and turns along the way. Lancaster is the kind of man who drinks too much, De Carlo is the kind of woman who uses men to get what she wants, and Duryea is the kind of man who would as soon shoot you as look at you. It's gritty, sometimes violent, and always entertaining. The film is expertly directed by Robert Siodmak, whose work I've always enjoyed. The script is exceptional with more double-crosses in the final half than one movie has a right to. No one is above double-crossing anyone else. It makes for a very entertaining hour and a half. The movie also features a nice look at Los Angeles in the 40s. The scenes of middle-class, single-family neighborhoods are quite different from the city of today.

While Criss Cross may not be the best film noir I've seen, I would place it somewhere on a list of my ten favorite noirs. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to fans of the genre.

As a film noir fan who read a lot of positive reviews of this film before seeing it, I wound up really disappointed with this after two views. For some reason, the first look wasn't bad but on a further viewing, it really dragged. The reason was simple: it took took long for the "heist" to happen.It turned out to be more of a talk-fest between Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo before anything happened.

I have nothing against the main actors and their performances. Lancaster, as always, was interesting and DeCarlo is also intriguing, especially for someone like me who grew up knowing her only as "Lily Munster." She had a convincing 1940s film noir look: pretty, sultry and not only looked the part but acted the part well, too. I wish she had done a few more noirs that were available on disc or tape.

When you add Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally and others, this should have been better and the middle just went on too long. The beginning and ending are, by far, the best parts of this movie.

This film looks great - a classic noir - but the story is dull and predictable. I'm sure this frustrated Robert Siodmak as he can never really make the film fire in the way that he did "The Killers". The other weak link is Yvonne De Carlo, who looks great but is never really convincing. Much better is Burt Lancaster, also looking great, but very convincing as the love-sick fool hero. And the supporting cast of hoods and odd-balls is interesting. Worthwhile, but not great - with an excellent finale.

While driving an armored car in a lonely road, Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) recalls his life, after divorcing his beloved wife Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) and working in many places in the United States of America, from the moment he returned home in Los Angeles a few days ago. Although traveling for almost two years trying to forget Anna, he is still obsessed with her. However, when he arrives in town, the sentimentally inconstant Anna gets married with the gangster Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). Steve plans a heist of the armored car with Slim, expecting to double-cross the criminal and escaping with Anna to another city to begin a new life, but things do not happen as he intended it was. "Criss Cross" is a magnificent film-noir, indeed another masterpiece of master Robert Siodmak. From the initial long scene, with an aerial view of Los Angeles reaching a spot in a parking area where Steve and Anna are having a conversation, to the conclusion of the story, there is no flaw in the script. Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of a honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect "femme-fatale". The black and white photography with many shadows is awesome in the DVD released in Brazil by the distributor Classicline, and the music score is simply perfect. In 1995, Steven Soderbergh updated this story with the excellent remake "Underneath". My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Baixeza" ("Lowness')

This is basically an inferior rehash of THE KILLERS (1946) by the same director and star, but a solid enough noir entry on its own; it was remade, much later, by Steven Soderbergh as THE UNDERNEATH (1995).

Burt Lancaster has the same role of the 'chump', Stephen McNally is the cop too eager to look out for him, Dan Duryea is remarkable standing in for Albert Dekker as the jealous crime boss, but Yvonne De Carlo isn't fatale enough – she merely comes across as someone who can't make up her own mind whether it's love she wants or money! Tony Curtis made his film debut here as De Carlo's dance partner in a club sequence; he would eventually co-star with Lancaster in the circus drama TRAPEZE (1956) and, most impressively, a superior noir-ish effort – the cynical masterpiece SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957).

Miklos Rozsa's score here is quite similar to that of BRUTE FORCE (1947), another noir featuring Lancaster – but, then, this particular composer's work always seemed to provide variations on the same theme (of course, depending on the genre). The highlight of the film, as was the case with THE KILLERS, is undeniably the elaborate heist sequence; the aprupt downbeat ending, then, is typical of the more doom-laden examples of the noir style.

Sure, you've seen it all before: the snarling villain (Dan Duryea), the black widow babe (Yvonne DeCarlo), and the hapless fall guy who just can't help himself (Burt Lancaster). But this is vintage noir from the golden age, done with real style and conviction. What stays with me are those scenes that have since worked their way into the textbook. There's the nightclub scene, where Lancaster gazes longingly at lost love DeCarlo, while she sambas with new honey boy Tony Curtis. Meanwhile there's this pulsating Latin beat that keeps going and going and everybody's shaking it except poor Lancaster. You feel the doom in the air and know this has to end badly. Then there's that nervous scene in the hospital where Lancaster's all laid up. But who's this new guy. He looks like Joe Average, but is he.

Director Siodmak really knows how to shift gears and make these quiet moments creepy. Everybody's been waiting for the robbery, but it seems like a cloudy dream, the kind you only half remember and wish you could forget. Ghostly figures drift in and out of focus, yet which one's Lancaster and who's got the money. Hollywood's fog machines were really working overtime on this one. Of course, it all leads up to the final scene, which is about as good as noir gets. The moment of reckoning when everything comes together, this time with a good view of eternity and in the moonlight, no less. The feeling that it all had to happen from the beginning is so thick you can cut it with the proverbial knife.

Sure, the D-cup DeCarlo's not quite up to the acting challenge, and the great Duryea doesn't get enough scenes, but consider the screen time given to two deserving foot soldiers of the golden era. Once you've seen him, you never forget him: that raspy-voiced gnome Percy Helton as the bartender. There's been no one like him before or since, a sly little troll who's escaped from the pages of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Yet I've never seen him give anything less than an A-grade performance that lifted many a B-movie above the forgettable. On the other hand, there's the completely ordinary Robert Osterloh as the mysterious stranger. His face is sort of familiar. Maybe he's the guy who fixes your car or fills your prescription or on a really bad night, shoves a gun in your gut. But like Helton, he too never gave anything less than an expert performance. Too bad his little Hollywood star never glowed, but he sure made a lot of others brighter than they were.

It's all there and in the kind of irreplaceable black and white that Hollywood's been trying to remake in Technicolor for years. So catch up with this original and find out why.

Like many viewers I was initially disappointed by Criss Cross. Some have claimed it to be a poor imitation of Lancaster's debut in "The Killers" but after repeated screenings I find that my appreciation increases with each viewing. The rather direct flashback plotting, the excellent supporting work of Dan Duryea and the whole stable of Universal bit players contribute to a delightful film noir experience. It does lack the irony and richness of story of "The Killers" and can't compare to "Out Of The Past" but the dynamic between Lancaster and DeCarlo ranks as some of the best interplay in the genre, even if a bit one dimensional.

If you are new to the genre, Criss Cross is not a first choice. But as you work your way through the cycle this film represents one of the high points of the studio systems addressing this film-making trend with non of the drawbacks often associated with "B" films.

It will be arguable with most viewers on whether or not Criss Cross, Robert Siodmak's quasi follow up to The Killers (featuring the same star, Burt Lancaster), is a definitive entry in the period of the film-noir. Part of this could be attributable to the heist sub-plot in the film, the one that drives on the characters to their bleak conclusions, is only good, not great, and is only inventive in how it is set up at the start, in typical noirish style, and then comes around again right at the 2/3 mark. What is essential or definitive about the picture, however, is the relationship between Steve (Lancaster) and Ann (the sultry late Yvonne DeCarlo). Here's a bond that has 'noir' written all over it; they've been divorced and estranged for quite a while, and when Steve comes back to town thinking at first with no intention of seeing her, it happens, old feelings stir up, and what he doesn't know, of course, is that she's married, this time to a mobster, Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea). When they attempt at seeing each other again- as their push and pull relationship has them at a disadvantage- Slim gets wise to it, and Steve only gets out of this jam by offering a job- a "can't-be-done" job involving an armored car.

There's something about the main actor and actress in a film-noir that always gets me perked up a little more, especially if they're in juicy roles, and here Siodmak has a near perfect pair on his hands. Lancaster, with his natural appeal as a (for a noir anyway) average-Joe, and DeCarlo, with everything that can make a man allured and dismayed by what he sees (dismayed, of course, because one might think that a girl like that would be unapproachable), play into these roles like it's second nature, and if for nothing else they're the real draw in Criss Cross. It's part of a sort of male psychological streak in these films, perhaps, that it's from the man's POV in how one gets drawn in by pure desire, even if the sense of fate and circumstance feel all too uneasy. There's great scenes in the nightclub, where Steve sees Ann again, dancing to a Latin tune that gets the mood to a high pitch, of the two of them talking together and seeing how they could work out as a couple, but also how tempers could flair at any moment on either side (I loved one bit where he asks her to go swimming with her on a weekend, and they're both grimacing the whole time). And then there's the sort of conventional fall-out where a paradoxical set of chances and bad choices send them to their respective dooms, of love getting criss-crossed (ho-ho) with greed and more pragmatic sensibilities. The ending at the rendezvous may seem a little too much without any hope, but then again who goes to see relationships like these work out as a happy ending?

Not Siodmak and his writers, for sure, and it's a major credit that his whole cast pulls off the parts, not just the principles (Duryea, by the way, is another in a long line of film-noir villains who never has to raise his voice to let himself be known as a threat in a room full of gangsters), but supporting players, like the old bartender, the even older guy who plans out part of the robbery (and waits to have his drink), or the concerned lieutenant Pete who stands on the sidelines not with the usual determination to bust the case, but as a kind of witness to Steve's demise ("I should've kicked you to get it in your head," he says late in the movie). On top of this Siodmak lays on the moody thrills and suspense with effortless glee, with the actual heist scene itself, shrouded mostly in smoke, a winner. Although much of the typical aspects of Criss Cross are worth the while, it's really the core of the picture, of the ties between such an easily read love-triangle, that becomes most fascinating. If it were on television sometime I would watch it again just for their scenes- as well as a few others- and it should stand the test of time as a very fine Hollywood thriller from one of the better directors of the period.

Gritty film noir with a young Burt Lancaster playing armoured truck driver Steve Thomson led by the nose by his beautiful ex-wife Anna, played by Yvonne DeCarlo into pulling a hold-up of his own truck with a gang led by Dan Duryea's Nick Dundee, in the hope of getting away with her.

Told in a series of flashbacks by Thomson the film is aptly named as double and even triple crosses proliferate throughout before one final betrayal sees a shockingly bleak conclusion to proceedings.

Unlike other noirs, this one is shot mostly in daylight but the dark motives of its participants, violence and deceptions fully identify the movie with noir trademarks. Occasionally Lancaster looks a little inexperienced in his lead role but grows into his part as the plot thickens. No problems on that score with experienced heavy Dan Duryea while Yvonne De Carlo perhaps just lacks that air of mystery and dark streak to fully convince as the femme fatale. There's good support behind the lead triangle with Stephen McNally as the pursuing detective with a conscience, while 60's TV fans will spot Allan Napier in a pre-Alfred, Batman's butler role as a dipsomaniacal criminal logistician and Richard Long, well before his "The Big Valley" days in a minor role as Steve's sister's young boyfriend. Look even closer and you might catch Tony Curtis getting his start as a good looking young gigolo dancing Anna around before Steve stakes his claim. He of course would go on to taste the sweet smell of success years later and meet up again with Lancaster at the same time.

Filmed on location in the bright daylight sun of Los Angeles just after the war, the dialogue is convincingly mundane among the characters in their everyday pursuits but sharpens up for the key dramatic scenes. There's one superb high-viewpoint shot of the delivery truck arriving at the scene of the heist, emphasising the film's title while elsewhere, some slight confusion over when Steve's flashbacks begin and end notwithstanding, this is a convincingly depicted fast-paced thriller well deserving of its high regard amongst noir admirers, not least for that unforgettable closing shot

Directed by Robert Siodmak. Starring Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Percy Helton, Tom Pedi, Joan Miller, Alan Napier, Robert Osterloh.

Lancaster's lovelorn tough guy haunts this dour crime noir, one of the better examples of the sub-genre during its most fruitful period. Still carrying a torch for his ex-wife (now married to heartless gangster Duryea), Lancaster plots an armored truck robbery while carrying on an affair, but the title makes it clear that not everything is going to go according to plan. Stylish direction from Siodmak (re-teaming with the star after they scored a few years earlier with "The Killers"), moody black-and-white photography from Franz Planer; even more cynical than expected of the type, talky at times with a tendency toward redundancy during the set-up scenes, with a memorably fatalistic finale. Lancaster is an odd choice for someone bordering on sadsack status, but he excels at hard-boiled presentation throughout and sweating during a suspenseful hospital scene; De Carlo is a middling fit as the femme fatale, though--more insensitive than calculating, she does little to inspire so much obsession. In his dialogue-free feature film debut, Tony Curtis can briefly be spotted dancing with the female lead.

75/100

Another good film noir. I didn't like it much at first, but as it progressed, it was getting better and better. Acting is above average for this genre, Lancaster is spectacular and De Carlo is both attractive and great as an actress. I loved its structure with the large flashback etc. It's anxiety-inducing during the second half and the viewer cares much about these characters. I really don't know what else to say in order cover the 600 words requirement. Any fan of this genre will like it. It's not a masterpiece neither groundbreaking, but there are moments of brilliance here and there, especially regarding of Lancaster's character.

There are three things that stand out as being particularly good about this film - a superb Miklos Rosza score, great black and white photography, and an excellent supporting performance by Percy Helton as a knowledgeable bartender. Other than these aspects though, there is little else to make the film worth watching. It is too slowly paced, and has a dull plot in which a heist plan is meshed in with relationship drama. It is also rather nasty at times, and the flashback narration feels like a forced way of explaining events. Even so, there are still some well done sequences and a number of exciting moments in the final third of the film, which help bring it up to scratch. Overall, it is a pretty typical noir thriller - but with some interesting elements.