This classic film noir unfolds like a Freudian parable on thatprimal quality of the film experience that works on us like a collectivedream. The femme fatale (the woman) on the screen (the window), with herhypnotic, bestirring persona leads us into a world that operates withthe twisted logic of a nightmare. Under Fritz Lang's lucid and seductivedirection, this psychological thriller seems to combine everything thatstimulates our dark attraction to the noir genre: the claustrophobicurban studio sets, the wide-awake camerawork, the restless shadows, thenocturnal temptress and the lapsed hero. Edward G. Robinson is Lang'sEveryman, a psychology professor whose obsession with the problem ofmurder and motive turns real when he is forced to commit one himself. Asin a recurring dream, the guilt-ridden Robinson is led through the crimescenes by his D.A. friend (Raymond Massey), maintaining aworld-closing-in feeling down to the film's own closure, which is bothinevitable and surprising. --Tom Kemper