The Woman in the Window

Left alone while his family is away, psychology professor Richard Wanley becomes fixated on a portrait of a woman in a shop window beside his club. He meets the model, her wealthy lover walks in, and the man dies in the struggle. Fritz Lang's film is one of the founding texts of noir, and it played a part in the term becoming a genre label at all. The ending is what people argue about. All of it turns out to be a dream Wanley had at his club. That solution is not unrelated to the Production Code rule that crime must be punished, but Lang defended it as structure rather than escape: the subject is not the crime but how quickly a respectable man comes apart. Edward G. Robinson plays the professor and Joan Bennett the woman, with Raymond Massey and Dan Duryea alongside. Robinson, Duryea and cinematographer Milton R. Krasner reunited with Lang the following year on Scarlet Street, and the two films are usually discussed together. It was nominated for scoring at the 18th Academy Awards. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 88 percent, and Paste called it the best film noir of all time in 2015. Who it is for: viewers who love forties noir and stories of a middle-aged man unravelling. Who it is not for: anyone who will call the ending a cheat. That objection is common and reasonable.