Criss Cross

Criss Cross (1949) is a Hollywood film noir directed by Robert Siodmak — watch online on iFILM. Steve Thompson comes back to Los Angeles a year after his divorce telling himself it's a fresh start. His ex-wife Anna is still in town. That's already the end of the fresh start.

Anna has since married Slim Dundee, a gangster. Steve knows this. He goes back anyway. To stay near Anna, he agrees to help Slim rob the armored car he himself is employed to guard. Burt Lancaster plays a man who sees the trap clearly and walks into it — not from stupidity, but from the specific blindness that desire produces. Dan Duryea as Slim is laconic and faintly amused; every line he delivers sounds like it was chosen to make you nervous.

Siodmak had already paired with Lancaster on The Killers (1946). This second collaboration goes darker and quieter. Cinematographer Franz Planer's nighttime Los Angeles has the kind of shadowed geography that makes a city feel like a sentence. Stream Criss Cross online on iFILM.