MovieChat Forums > The Woman in the Window (1944) Discussion > Fritz Lang's moralistic fight for the 'd...

Fritz Lang's moralistic fight for the 'dream' ending

posted 13 years ago by richard-III
12 replies | jump to latest

I read here and there that Lang had to give in to the Hayes code and to the studio, that it was censorship working... all this was simply not the case!

The ever moralistic director made a moralistic choice by filming this 'dream' ending. And it was no trick ending, we can see the professor - at the beginning - dose off and fall asleep in his club chair.

Fritz Lang thought that it would be unjust to professor Wanley, to play a cruel trick upon him by giving him a bad ending. It's like killing off dear Mr Fezziwig in Dicken's Christmas Carol, or amicable Mr Micawber in David Copperfield!

Lang wrote "this would have been a defeatist ending, a tragedy for nothing brought about by an implacable Fate."

Lang really had to argue with his screenwriter to end the film as it does now. And Lang wasn't interested in keeping the studio happy. He thought it was a moral issue. It would be cruel, unjust and unnecessary to leave an innocent and good man - as he saw the professor that way - with such a fate. So Lang used the gifts of the gods: sleep. The professor fell asleep in his chair, and woke up again in his chair.

And this dream framing, a friendly reality frame around a noir nightmare, is exactly why it's my favorite little Fritz Lang film. Humanistic, like the films from the other famous director from the same period, Jean Renoir.

Sources:
- Lotte Eisner's book on Lang
- Frederick W. Ott's book on Lang

"I don't discriminate between entertainment
and arthouse. A film is a goddam film."

[–] bushwah13 12 years ago

Thanks for the post.. I would have really thought of it the other way, in that Fritz would have to polish the story. I on the other hand, felt cheated by the ending, but maybe I should check it again to see if the professor does actually fall asleep. I also, at the time, was kind of irritated by the professor's foolishness while at every possible spot he just kept giving away every possible evidence that he knew things before the investigators.. My preference is "Scarlet Street" out of the two.

[–] Jabbapop 12 years ago

I think the dream ending is even crueler than a suicide, in that even in his fantasies, Edward G Robinson is denied the sex act with a comely young woman.

[–] Hyman_Flomax 12 years ago

Humanism seems unnatural coming from someone like Fritz Lang, and if he believes that Wanley was a good man, then he doesn't know his own material well enough. On the basis of the "dream" material, Wanley was a cheat and a liar who lived a fraudulent lifestyle, trying to disguise his animalistic impulses and fears under a veil of rationality. I was almost willing to conclude that the ending worked as some kind of practical joke on the audience, but after reading this I'm more inclined to view it as a compromise that doesn't work at all.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

[–] richard-III 12 years ago

"trying to disguise his animalistic impulses and fears under a veil of rationality"
Well, that sounds like 'dream material' to me, trying to hide those impulses but not being able to. Can't judge a man just by his dreams.

The humanist quality is clearly there in Lang films like FURY, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, TWITW and SCARLET STREET (which was a remake of De La Fouchardiere and Mouezy-Eon's play, first filmed as LA CHIENNE by Renoir).

"I don't discriminate between entertainment
and arthouse. A film is a goddam film."

[–] Hyman_Flomax 12 years ago

I would say quite the contrary. His films are usually about the tragedy of doomed characters caught up in the flow of life, or innocent people enmeshed in the tangled strands of fate. Lang is a determinist, not a humanist at all (the contrast between Renoir and Lang should illustrate this). His films all share the same bleak view of the universe, where people grapple with their personal destiny and inevitably lose.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

[–] richard-III 12 years ago

The man has both sides. You're right ofcourse about his deterministic quality (I only mentioned his humanistic quality), but as it should be with a threedimensional artist, he's tougher and more complicated than that. As the humanist side of the stories I mentioned before, shows. That's why TWITW has a partly warm ending, it is not a tragedy. It is an honest ending.

With the same arguments I won't call Renoir a determinist even though he filmed LA CHIENNE (Lang's remake: SCARLET STREET) or Emile Zola's LA BETE HUMAINE (Lang's version: HUMAN DESIRE). Or LE TESTAMENT DU DOCTEUR CORDELIER (Jekyll & Hyde). But these films nevertheless proof Renoir has his darker, deterministic side. And the overlapse shows that Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir have more in common than you think.

"I don't discriminate between entertainment
and arthouse. A film is a goddam film."

[–] SteveH2002 12 years ago

I've read some of the comments on the 'dream' ending, the entirety of this thread, a few other threads.

My first thought, after watching the movie again for the first time in a long time today, that the Code had a lot to do with the 'it was only a dream' ending.

According to the Code Professor Wanley - the EG Robinson character - had to pay some way or another for his crime. If he hadn't drank the poison he would have had to have been arrested because crime doesn't pay and criminals don't go unpunished.

Considering his choices - death, arrest, dream - I think this one made the most sense. It's strong, EGR doesn't need to be punished because he never committed a crime - even tho we've experienced him committing a number of crimes. Lang was able to have his cake and eat it, too. If it hadn't been a dream the next best reward for EGR, who I thought was presented as a victim of circumstances, an innocent caught in the web, would be to somehow escape with Joan Bennett. And that wouldn't have been fully satisfying because she was more of a surrogate daughter than a love interest.

Just my immediate reaction to the movie.

[–] jdown-1 12 years ago

Sorry, Richard, but it doesn't help to point out that Fritz Lang himself wanted the dream ending, because, you see, IMDB posters here know much more than Fritz Lang about how to craft a movie, even one that is a minor classic. Just ask them. They will gladly tell you so.

[–] richard-III 12 years ago

Hehe, yes I found that out. Even if Mr Lang was still alive and kicking, people would say to him "You're wrong, Fritz, you said you wanted the dream ending but in fact you didn't. Listen to us, Fritz, we've studied film courses and we're brighter than you are!"

"I don't discriminate between entertainment
and arthouse. A film is a goddam film."

[–] Grethiwha 11 years ago

When it looked like it was about to end on Robinson dying... I like tragic endings, but I thought it was a pretty unremarkable one, save for the fact I didn't expect it in an old Hollywood film, and I would have rather seen something a bit more clever for this film.

And the ending turned out to be much more clever, I thought, in an amusing, stupid kind of way. And those last lines! I don't know how anyone can hate an ending that made that last bit happen.

Glad to know this was Lang's intended ending. It just fit better with the tone of the film, and was too funny and memorable not to be.

--- grethiwha -------- My Favourite Films:
http://www.imdb.com/list/Bw65XZIpkH8/

[–] manu5689 11 years ago

just saw this film for the first time, don't know too much about Lang (I've only seen The Big Heat). At first I thought it was a cheat ending. But I though about it a little bit more and it makes sense for the movie to be a dream. the entire film works like a dream. The movie relies on so many coincidences that it would have fallen apart. For one thing, Richard's lecture about the degrees of murder is exactly what happened to him. Then he keeps making mistakes, dropping clues, being seen by people, accidentally saying things he shouldn't. There's a dream like quality to this movie, a sense of coincidence that can only be explained by dream logic

"It's hard for me to watch American Idol because I have perfect pitch."
-Jenna, 30 Rock

[–] clore_2 11 years ago

And Lang was still in a way getting around the Code somewhat when you consider that this was the rule at the time:

"Suicide, as a solution of problems occurring in the development of screen drama, is to be discouraged as morally questionable and as bad theatre—unless absolutely necessary for the development of the plot."

Thus, with the ending as it is, Lang still got to flaunt a suicide and get away with it. Surely that had to be an easier battle with the censors than having his protagonist "get away" with murder - even if in a dream. Once Lang tested the waters with that, he could further test them with his next film.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me