Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Scarlet Street 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 5, 2024

Fritz Lang's "Scarlet Street" (1945) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the release include exclusive new audio commentary by critic Imogen Sara Smith and archival audio commentary by critic David Kalat. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

You are a painter, right? Paint my toenails.

When it rains, it pours. At a party, middle-aged cashier Chris Cross (Edward G. Robinson) gets a surprising gift from his genuinely grateful boss, who proudly declares before several employees and business partners that for twenty-five years he has never failed to meet his expectations. Then after the party, while waiting for the heavy rain to stop, Cross helps a beautiful young woman named Kitty (Joan Bennett) avoid a mugger and moments later has a drink with her. Before they part ways, Kitty turns his world upside down by agreeing to see him again.

In the days ahead, not realizing that Kitty is a working girl madly in love with abusive street hustler Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea), Cross becomes a dreamer and loans her several hundred dollars, which he steals from his wife’s savings. The dream that blurs his mind then becomes so ambitious that he also agrees to rent her a luxury apartment under the pretext that it can be the perfect place for him to paint. And since Cross has proven to have plenty of money, Kitty and her boyfriend cook up a plan to have him ‘help’ with another $1,000.

While Cross begins stealing from his company’s vault and arranges an ‘accident’ for his annoying wife, Kitty and her boyfriend snatch a few of his paintings, hoping to exchange them for cash. However, after the paintings become instant hits with the city’s wealthiest art collector and the most prominent art critic and the two begin looking for the artist that painted them, Cross’ magical dream cracks and Kitty and her boyfriend’s lies begin to fall apart.

Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street works with the same original material that Jean Renoir’s The Bitch did a little over a decade earlier, which comes from a popular novel by French writer Georges de La Fouchardiere. However, while there are numerous easily recognizable similarities between these films, including stylistic similarities, they are quite different.

For example, while chronicling the misery of the middle-aged cashier, the two films deconstruct the social reality in which he and the rest of the characters are placed differently. In Scarlet Street, this environment is simpler and not as cynical, so the narrative does not produce any memorable observations about its relationship to society. In The Bitch, the misery of the middle-aged cashier is carefully managed in a much more cynical environment to dispel various myths that society has kept relevant over the decades.

Rather predictably, the two films rely on actors with different personalities and styles that impact the drama differently as well. In Scarlet Street, the leads, but especially Duryea, give their characters noirish qualities that become crucial for its identity. The cinematography does the same to most of the locations they visit, and it becomes impossible not to profile Scarlet Street as a classic film noir. The Bitch has some elements of film noir that are recognizable in its visual style, but it is not a film noir or even a predecessor of film noir. It is a conventional European drama that has plenty in common with some of the more socially aware pre-Code era Hollywood films.

The final fifteen or so minutes of Scarlet Street quite easily could have emerged from one of Lang’s early European films about the notorious Dr. Mabuse, like Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler. The noirish atmosphere is suppressed by a notably darker atmosphere that just about pushes Scarlet Street into a territory that Dr. Mabuse and many of the other famous characters from the great German expressionist films liked to visit.

Lang used the services of cinematographer Milton Krasner, who lensed one of the great film noirs of the 1940s, The Set-Up, in which Robert Ryan plays a desperate aging boxer who finds himself trapped in a lose-lose situation.

Scarlet Street 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino Lorber's release of Scarlet Street is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. The 4K Blu-ray is Region-Free. However, the Blu-ray is Region-A "locked".

Please note that some of the screencaptures that appear with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray disc.

Screencaptures #1-22 are from the Blu-ray.
Screencaptures #25-38 are from the 4K Blu-ray.

The native 4K presentation of Scarlet Street can be viewed with HDR and Dolby Vision grades. I viewed it with Dolby Vision and then tested different areas of the 1080p presentation. I also did some comparisons with this release of Scarlet Street from 2012.

I have to immediately mention that I prefer how Scarlet Street looks in native 4K, though it is not fully, or perhaps it is better to write properly, restored in 4K. For example, on the native 4K presentation, various areas with density fluctuations that affect highlights and shadow definition look better. Not by a lot, but enough to make these areas look better balanced and convey more convincing lighter and darker nuances. In fact, from time to time, in select close-ups improvements in the gamma levels leave the impression that the discrepancy in quality is much, much bigger, or at least this was the case on my system, where many darker close-ups looked unquestionably superior. In 1080p, without the Dolby Vision grade, many of the same areas look a bit rougher and less convincing. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. However, the density fluctuations that I mentioned earlier produce plenty of loose grain. Clarity and sharpness are pleasing. The surface of the visuals is not immaculate. There are several large damage marks, various specks, and blemishes. They are never distracting, but a proper 4K restoration would have eliminated these imperfections.

Scarlet Street 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The dialog is easy to follow. However, in several areas the audio has noticeable unevenness that is not inherited. It is not distracting, but there is definitely room for various meaningful stabilization enhancements. Dynamic intensity is quite modest, which is to be expected from a film that was shot in the 1940s. There are no audio dropouts, distortions, or other similar encoding anomalies to report.

Scarlet Street 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

4K BLU-RAY DISC

• Commentary One - this archival audio commentary was recorded by critic David Kalat. It was included on Kino Lorber's first release of Scarlet Street.

• Commentary Two - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Imogen Sara Smith.

BLU-RAY DISC

• Commentary One - this archival audio commentary was recorded by critic David Kalat. It was included on Kino Lorber's first release of Scarlet Street.

• Commentary Two - this exclusive new audio commentary was recorded by critic Imogen Sara Smith.

Scarlet Street 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It is perhaps a bit unfair to profile Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street only as a film noir because its final fifteen or so minutes transition into a territory that many characters from the great German expressionist films liked to visit. I think that this is entirely by design because it is where Lang felt at home, too. While I like Scarlet Street a lot as it is, I have often wondered whether spending more time there would have made it a superior film. This 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack offers the best technical presentation of Scarlet Street that I have seen to date. However, the 4K master that was used to produce it could have been cleaned up better. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.