Good ol' cliches (Spoilers)

I absolutely love this movie. Another total classic by one of the great masters of creating classics. Fritz Lang's writing is just impeccable here... with one moment standing out as a possible exception.

I'm sure nearly everyone here is familiar with the cliche I have in mind. Most commonly found in war movies I would say, it's the moment just before a tragedy, where a character does something meant to incite a lot of emotion and audience connection with the character so it's more dramatic when they are suddenly killed a moment later. The soldier sharing a picture of his wife and kids back home, or even more laughably the cop glowing on the last day before his retirement.

Nowadays the cliche is so engrained in our minds we can often predict imminent tragedy just by a suspiciously emotional moment's occurrence. This was the case for me when Glenn Ford's character was being extraordinarily lovey-dovey with his wife just before she is killed by the car bomb.

The thing is, I'm not sure what to make of the cliche's use in this film. Was this even an established cliche back when this film was made? It seems such a basic emotional tactic for a writer to use I can't imagine Lang being the first, but just how prevalent was its usage in film (or even other media) before this time?

It's not over, everybody betrayed me! I'm fed up with this world!