Lang's remake of (and improvement on) Renoir's La Chienne, this stark,
noirish melodrama turns its story of an amateur artist (Robinson)
enticed to his destruction by Bennett's icy femme fatale into a
profound meditation on the subjectivity of perception. The
artificiality of the studio sets emphasise that theme as appearance
and reality separate, and under-stated performances (Robinson and
Bennett are both incredible) conceal unsettling passions. Lang's
style, by and large unusually muted, finally explodes into a fevered
expressionistic climax. A brilliantly subversive thriller.
