The Woman in the Window (1944)

The Woman in the Window has some shallow similarities with It's a Wonderful life. It's just that Fritz Lang's film is better, less sentimental than the X-masy morality tale you all know. In the ouevre of Mr Lang, this is a minor film, but as a paranoid crime story, it works pretty well - it kept this viewer interested, at least interested enough to sit through the entire thing. The story is a simple one. A middleaged professor sits with his buddies talking about the way they are not in the Game anymore, no, the way of Vice is not... their way. A small tiny step and you're in hell. The professor, of course, ends up in hell. Or that's what we think. What keeps the film going is the elegant cinematography paired with the very stripped-down nature of the storytelling. - - The ending, I must warn you, makes the film a far sloppier affair than it could've been.