THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 318, 27 July 1945, Page 18

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

(International-RKO)

MORE psychology, this time in a yery gripping thriller which would be even more effective than it is if the pro-

ducer were not compelled by the Hays Office ban on unpunished crime to treat the audience as if they were a bunch of children. A quiet little middle-aged professor (Edward G. Robinson) is involved, quite accidentally and almost innocently, in a glamorous encounter with a demi-mondaine (Joan Bennett). He has been relishing her portrait in a window, his relish being tempered with regret that he is too old and too respectable for such emotions, when the original of the painting appears at his shoulder, engages him in conversation, and quite literally invites him up to her apartment to look at her etchings-that and nothing more. But in the apartment her hot-headed lover suddenly appears and proceeds to choke the professor to death. He blindly grabs a pair of scissors in self-defence and the next moment finds that he has a corpse on his hands as well as an incipient acenda if not a murder charge. As the unhappy professor tries to dispose of the body and cover up his tracks, while continually making mistakes that keep bringing him to the verge of disaster, the director (Fritz Lang) stretches the tension of the story and the nerves of the audience almost too tight for comfort. Eventually it begins to look as if he will either have to give the story an unhappy ending (by the suicide of the professor), or else one that you realise on second thoughts would be contrary to the censorship code (by pinning the killing on a blackmailer and letting the real culprit go free). Instead, the director evades the issue by assuring the audience that the whole thing was just (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) a dream. Surprise, kiddies! Nothing to worry your little heads about any more! This dream device is as ingeniously handled as the rest of the picture. But it is a crashing anti-climax, out of keeping with the realistic mood of the melodrama. The suspense fizzes out as if the cap had been jerked off a bottle of pop. You may feel relieved, but it is impossible not to feel deflated. I suppose: it is unreasonable, but I rather object to being treated so obviously as a child when I go to the movies.