Criss Cross

Story

After a noir-soaked aerial credit sequence of a city at night, we cut to a dark parking lot where Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster) is kissing Anna (Yvonne De Carlo). Anna has clearly slipped away from her husband to be with Steve, who is discussing the details of his heist planned for tomorrow evening. Anna assures Steve that after the job, it will only be the two of them. Slim Dundee (Richard Widmark) misses his wife Anna back inside the nightclub while hassling the waiter, wondering where she could be. Slim is immediately suspicious when Anna returns and tells him she was outside in the parking lot.

Pete Ramirez (Stephen McNally), a cop, intercepts Steve as he enters The Round-Up Bar, warning him not to cause trouble. But Steve still enters the main lounge and walks into a small private room. The men immediately have the women leave. One girl asks a bartender to break up a potential fight, but he doesn’t want to get involved. The rhumba band plays on as Pete is warned that one man in the private room has a knife. Pete enters to find Slim Dundee recovering from a punch and Steve ranting that this is just between him and Dundee. All the staff saw nothing. His boys advise Dundee to calm down, as tomorrow’s job will involve six figures. Pete has no idea that Steve and Slim are in a deal together and that both men need to act friendly. Dundee admits he was “off his head” and appreciates what Steve told Pete, the cop. The gang is ecstatic that the job is still on and that Dundee and Thompson have apparently buried the hatchet.

Bank officials are loading cash into bags while chatting casually. The armored car crew arrives, and a bank official asks where Steve is. They tell the officials he’s the outside man today. One driver is told his wife is ill and asks whether Steve can handle the transport without him. Of course, he can, he tells the other man. Steve and the other guard, Pop (Griff Barnett), load the cash into the armored truck. Steve drives, and Pop climbs into the rear. The older guard worries that only two men are present, that the job requires three. Steve tells him to stay calm and not to worry.

As Steve drives, he thinks of the past, drifting around the country, taking odd jobs, and finally returning home. But from the start, he feels jinxed. He tries to call Pete Ramirez, but Pete is out. Back at his favorite bar, he secretly longs to meet Anna. Yet the clientele and staff have changed, leaving him alienated. He is also considered a “checker” spying on the bar scene. Finally, Pete arrives and warmly greets him. Pete offers to drive him home to see his aging parents and his brother Slade (Richard Long), who is planning to marry. Steve reminisces about his marriage to Anna two years ago, which lasted only seven months.

Returning to the Round Up Bar that night, Anna dances with another man (a young Tony Curtis) as an orchestra plays. Resting at a table, Anna spots Steve, calls out his name, and they sit together at her table. She seems happy to see him. Slim Dundee approaches the table and accuses Steve of sitting in his chair. Though Slim invites Steve to join them, Steve quietly excuses himself. Later, he regains his former job with the armored car company. Anna meets with him and wants to get back together, but Steve is pessimistic about them reverting to fighting and yelling and rejects the plan. Then Steve warns her about Dundee and invites her to go swimming at Zuma Beach. Steve’s mother (Edna Holland) warns her son about Anna and admits she has already informed Pete.

At the Round Up, the head waiter gives away Steve’s reserved table and tells him that Anna married Slim Dundee. Steve is livid. Months pass, and Steve tries to forget Anna and move on, but he can’t.

By happenstance, Steve spots Anna at Union Station and then sees Slim Dundee join her. He wants to confront them, but he sheepishly walks away. As he exits the station, he runs into Anna, who no longer wants to be seen with him, and she leaves almost immediately. In the next scene, Anna plays a sad piece on the piano as Steve sits and watches. She gloats about being married to Dundee. Steve calls her a no-good little tramp. Anna angrily reveals that Steve’s friend, Pete, told her to stay away from Steve or he’d frame her. Steve is dumbfounded by her disclosure. She has finally committed to the man who offered her everything, Dundee, but regrets her decision. Slim is insanely jealous of her, and Anna shows Steve the bruises on her back from physical abuse. They fall into each other’s arms. Anna asks, “What are we gonna do!”

Steve goes to the Round Up to sulk, get drunk, and abuse innocent people until the bartender calls Pete. Steve asks Pete about seeing Anna and poisoning her mind, and Pete admits it. Steve tries to take a swing at Pete, but Pete dodges, and Steve tumbles to the ground. In the men’s room, Pete splashes water on his head and warns him that women of a certain type, he knows from experience, are no good, and that Slim Dundee isn’t any angel. Steve is hard-headed and tells Pete nobody tells him what to do.

Avoiding his mother, Anna visits Steve and warns him that Dundee knows about them and is coming for him. Dundee will probably try to kill him. Steve wants to run away with Anna immediately, but a strange sound comes from below. Dundee’s man appears with beer and invites Steve to join them. Dundee, seated calmly, says, “You know it doesn’t look right,” referring to Anna and Steve's relationship. Steve says it’s not what it looks like and that he simply wants to talk to Dundee. He says you guys are the only crooks I know, and I wanted to ask about a heist, an armored car job.

Immediately, the criminals want to involve Finchley (Alan Napier), the big boss of crime. Steve tries to negotiate a 50/50 split, but Dundee wants more. Reluctantly, egged on by his boys, Dundee accepts the deal. Finchley, late but not fully convinced about the heist, comes to the meeting place to say he’s out, but he listens to the heist idea. Steve explains he’s the inside man, and Finchley seems interested. Going over every detail and making improvements, Finchley seems totally committed. Anna tells Steve she wishes they had never met, knowing how much she has corrupted him. Slim Dundee’s men grow weary around the planning table, but they settle on everything, including Anna being the payoff woman.

Now we return to the future, in the armored truck, with Steve driving. The old guard Pop notices they are being tailed, but the car passes them by. The armored truck pulls in front of an ice cream truck and stops at the “men working” sewer hole in the street. As the men from the armored truck carry money inside, their truck explodes, sending smoke billowing everywhere. The robbers don gas masks, and Pop fires a shot at the man stealing the money, but he turns and fires three shots into Pop, killing him. The gang throws smoke bombs everywhere. Suddenly, one gang member fires a shot at Steve, and a vicious fight ensues. Steve ultimately fires a shot into his leg. Steve is finally shot and wounded, awakening in a hospital with a cast on his arm, only to discover Pop is dead and that he is considered a hero for saving half of the payroll.

Pete visits Steve in the hospital, accusing him of being in with the gangsters. Pete claims nobody can successfully rob an armored truck without an angle, and he accuses Steve of being that angle. Pete yells that the gang used him. Pete realizes they needed an inside man. Pete says Dundee and the gang used and worked Steve as the prime sucker of all time. Pete says that if he double-crossed Slim, Slim would send a man to the hospital to kill him. Pete accuses Anna of being with Slim and using Steve. Pete regrets not being tough on Steve earlier to set him right when he could. Steve sees a strange man sitting in the hall and wonders if that man is gunning for him. Steve tells his nurse to invite the man, Mr. Nelson (Robert Osterloh), into his room. When the nurse goes off duty, only Steve and the man are in the room, but Mr. Nelson seems innocent. Steve asks Nelson to watch the door for him and wake him if anyone enters. When the clock strikes 12, Nelson suddenly gets up, looks out the window, and runs out of the room, fetching a wheelchair with Steve’s clothes. Returning to Steve’s room, he tells Steve that Slim wants to see him to find out where Anna stashed the money.

Steve, obviously in pain from his arm, writhes in a car seat as Nelson drives. Steve offers Nelson ten grand not to take him to Slim’s. Nelson, obviously tempted, drives to Anna’s hideout. He enters the house to find Anna, thinking all is well. Steve pays Nelson, and Nelson hurriedly exits. Anna demands to know who that man was, and Steve tells her. Anna panics, saying the man will tell Slim where she is hiding out and that she has to pack and get away fast. Anna tells Steve that his injuries would slow her down and that she has to get away. “You have to look out for yourself, that’s the way it is. I’m sorry!” Disillusioned and heartbroken, Steve is shocked by Anna’s comments.

Anna quickly leaves but hears a car pull up and flees back into the house, where Slim Dundee enters with a cane. Slim admits that Steve loved her, but Slim does too. Slim fires three shots as police sirens approach. Steve and Anna lie dead in each other’s arms as Slim walks out to face the cops, and the credits roll.

Critique

Director Robert Siodmak, along with producer Michael Kraike (billed here as Michel), has created a serious film noir starring a young Burt Lancaster as Steve Thompson. The film emphasizes the wily femme fatale (Yvonne De Carlo) who has naïve Steve wrapped around her little finger. His friend, a cop, and his own mother warn him about cold-hearted Anna, but, being a sucker for love, he does not listen. Anna, who seemingly dumped Steve for an experienced mobster, Slim Dundee, seemingly pretends to regret her decision, which Steve believes. When she breaks up with Steve for the final time, she mentions that a girl has to look out for herself, telling the injured sap that his wounds would slow her down. That great final shot, dressed appropriately, shows a brief sequence of Steve and Anna dead, holding one another. Their relationship, or what passes for one, illustrates the femme fatale trope in film noir, in which an innocent man plays the sucker to the self-centered woman who is using him.

Even evil Slim Dundee plays Steve Thompson for the sap, being offered a 50/50 split by the novice Thompson, and Dundee accepts such a deal even though he possesses the skills and experience to professionally pull off a complex heist, and seems to give in to Thompson without much of a fight. Things magically fall too rapidly into his novice hands, and the audience senses there’s a broader plan behind the obvious one.

The actual heist sequence is built up throughout the movie, and its delivery is definitely the film’s ultimate payoff. Among explosions, swinging money bags, smoking fire bombs, fist and gun fights, Dundee’s men turning against Steve, and smoke billowing everywhere, the scene is cinematic and tense. It may be a relatively brief section of the movie, but it's sure an essential one.

Steve Thompson is one pathetic man. He uselessly drifts around the country until he finally returns home. If he were primarily reconnecting to his family, his elderly parents, his brother, and Pete the cop, perhaps his homecoming would be more successful. But his chief purpose is to repair the damage done to his ex-wife, Anna, and to try to rekindle the relationship, ultimately winning her back, he thinks. But Anna is involved with gangster Slim Dundee and his gang, so Steve should see the writing on the wall. Steve is a fool to think he could effortlessly return home to a world that has radically changed. Even his favorite bar, the Round-Up, has a new staff and clientele, just like his relationship with Anna has changed. Everywhere he searches, he sees it is not simple to return home and expect nothing significant has changed.

This film illustrates that life moves forward, that nothing remains the same, that you can’t go home again. Steve foolishly clings to a relationship that ended in divorce, thinking he can go back and change it. Criss Cross shows the depths of believing in things that no longer exist or never existed in the first place. Steve just asks people to play him for a fool, and he deserves to die at the end of the movie for his fantasy assumptions. When film noir creates a chump for the genre, perhaps the greatest fool of all is Steve Thompson, the greatest film noir victim.

YVONNE DE CARLO AS THE ULTIMATE FEMME FATALE, ANNA

THE WILY ANNA AND GANGSTER SLIM DUNDEE (DAN DURYEA)

A PUBLICITY SHOT SHOWING SLIM ABOUT TO KILL ANNA AND STEVE THOMPSON (BURT LANCASTER)

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