With the official announcement of the Warner Bros. Film Noir Classic Collection Vol. 4, enthusiasts can rejoice at the prospect of twice as many films as in the other three volumes, at the same price, and all with commentaries and featurettes. There are some real gems in there too, highlighted by Nicholas Ray’s debut They Live by Night and the Anthony Mann classic Side Street. Back in July 2004, when the first WB Film Noir Collection was released, Universal seemingly started their own line, christened with a Universal Noir Collection banner at the top of each cover. There were four titles, including Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross and the first pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, This Gun for Hire. All had the retail price of $14.98 and no extras aside from an occasional trailer, but the transfers were top-notch. And then….nothing.

Universal hasn’t followed up on their noir line despite the yearly Warner Bros. sets and the emergence of the Fox Film Noir series, priced the same as Universal’s discs and including paper inserts and commentaries (though the spine-numbered Fox collection has been absent lately). There’s little indication that Universal is interested in releasing much of their back catalog individually, preferring instead to package several films into affordably priced sets. A bevy of noteworthy choices, films like Ride the Pink Horse, The Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, Phantom Lady, and Ministry of Fear, are waiting to be digitally unleashed from the Universal library. Ehh, patience I guess. The studio did an impressive job on their two-disc release of Double Indemnity last year, but I’d feel better if there had been even one other noir title announced in the last four years.

Thankfully, the short-lived Universal Noir Collection gave us some quality films, the best probably being Criss Cross. The film reunites director Robert Siodmak with his leading man from The Killers, Burt Lancaster. Lancaster plays Steve Thompson, a man who’s just returned to his California home town after traveling across America for several months to get away from the divorced ex-wife, Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), he hadn’t quite gotten over. He’s a fairly typical film noir protagonist, a regular guy with a weak spot for a woman and the accompanying potential to turn into a chump as a result. As the film begins, we learn that Thompson is in on a plan to rob the armored car he drives, along with the thuggish Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea, maybe the best dressed man in the movies) who’s Anna’s new husband. This being noir, it’s not difficult to figure out that Thompson is involved because of Anna and the promise of being with her.

Watching the film, you realize how perfectly Criss Cross embodies film noir. Almost everything people love about this type of movie is present here. There’s the man who’s just returned to town and immediately gets caught up (again) with a woman of ambiguous motives. Because of her, he commits a criminal act that doesn’t appear to be in his character otherwise and suffers the consequences of betrayal and foolishness. Burt Lancaster, who had the incredible good fortune of starring in The Killers and Brute Force as his first two films, is a first-rate noir actor, De Carlo is a drop-dead gorgeous femme fatale, and Dan Duryea should be synonymous with this type of role in this type of movie. Siodmak made his mark in Hollywood with noirs like this, as well as Phantom Lady, Cry of the City (reportedly coming soon on DVD from Criterion), and The Dark Mirror. Though perhaps not as distinguished a film noir cinematographer as John Alton or James Wong Howe, Franz Planer shot the film and was a five-time Oscar nominee. On top of all that, we even have an occasional voice-over!

The problem, then, is that Criss Cross almost seems like a paint-by-numbers film noir. It’s a highly entertaining one, for sure, and since the genre/style didn’t formally exist when the movie was made, one can’t really fault the film for adhering so closely. However, there’s nothing really that makes Siodmak’s film stand out from the crowd. Even though it’s an accomplished, enjoyable entry, it’s lacking the colorful supporting characters or the surge of violence or the dynamic chiaroscuro lighting or the untethered villain, etc. that highlights so many great films of this kind. There’s nothing terribly memorable to be found here, aside from possibly the emergence of De Carlo as a missed opportunity for future femme fatale roles of this caliber. Duryea is effective, even if he’s restrained more here than in his best films.

I like Lancaster a lot in general because he was adept at combining intelligence and physicality, but he’s sort of a blank slate in this role. While that’s not intended as a knock, and he’s obviously still finding his way as an actor here, his portrayal of Thompson is fine, if not particularly affecting. Regardless, Lancaster’s early roles should establish him as one of the essential principals of noir, including three films, I believe, Universal has the rights to but has not yet released on DVD - Desert Fury, I Walk Alone, and Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, all of which I’ve not seen but sound worthwhile. He didn’t have the short-fused cruelty like Ryan or Widmark, but, in true noir fashion, his few evil characters, most strikingly J.J. Hunsecker from Sweet Smell of Success, were cold, calculating demons of men. In Criss Cross, the scenes with De Carlo stand out the most, I think, and the two actors have good chemistry together, as they allude to a smoldering sexual undercurrent between the characters. You get the feeling that the “making-up” De Carlo talks about is the whole basis of their relationship.

Speaking of which, how great is Yvonne De Carlo here. From looking at her filmography, it appears she was mostly stuck in lesser films and supporting roles, frequently cast as an exotically “ethnic” looking beauty (which is a little strange for a woman born with the name Margaret, or Peggy depending on the source, Middleton in Vancouver, Canada). The actress probably best known as Lily Munster also appeared in Brute Force, among many other film roles. Criss Cross shows not only how beautiful she was, but also how good she could be with the proper role. Her Anna never really tips her hand concerning her true interest in Thompson until the very end. Then, just after he’s risked everything to begin his life anew with her, she’s ready to bail on him with a bag full of money. I found De Carlo’s consistent, yet incomplete, affection towards Thompson throughout the film to be an accomplished ambiguity sometimes lacking in film noir. We often see a more one-dimensional female whose motives are obvious from the start, but De Carlo, who just passed away in January, does a superb job of feeding the audience little morsels of her character as the film progresses.

She also has a dynamite scene with a young, unbilled Tony Curtis (who would be Sidney Falco to Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker less than a decade later) at a dance hall. It’s the first time Thompson sees his ex-wife after returning from his sojourn outside of California. As the band plays and the pianist almost convulsively pounds the keys, the film becomes reminiscent of that remarkable Elisha Cook, Jr. drum solo in Siodmak’s Phantom Lady from five years earlier. That film can be considered the director’s breakthrough in America, after coming over from Germany via France. Interestingly, his very first directorial credit, Menschen am Sonntag, or People on Sunday, from 1930, has possibly the strongest group of filmmakers involved of any feature flim in movie history. Along with Robert Siodmak’s brother Curt, the shot on-location film was co-directed by Oscar winner Fred Zinnemann and noted B-movie director Edgar G. Ulmer. Sharing writing credit with the Siodmaks was none other than Billy Wilder.

I feel almost like I’m beeing too critical of Criss Cross, even though it’s not on the level of what I consider the great films noir. It’s more of a greatest hits package of what so many people love about this type of film and is tightly paced at 88 minutes. The film is highly attractive to those interested in noir and shouldn’t disappoint viewers in search of the typical elements found in such films. It does have a pretty great and undeniably dark ending (spoiled by the geniuses who designed the “Scenes” menu screen on the Universal DVD) that’s difficult to argue with, either from a dramatic or a karmic standpoint. There’s no reason to be apologetic in liking the film, but you might be hungry for something else not too long after watching it.