What it’s about
Walking home from a private men’s club, middle-aged criminology professor Richard Wanley (Robinson) coincidentally encounters a beautiful young woman, Alice Reed (Bennett), whose portrait he had been admiring in a gallery window earlier that day. She invites him up for a drink and a chat, but when her jealous thug boyfriend barges in without warning, Wanley kills him in self-defense. After disposing of the body, all Wanley can do is hope his D.A. friend Frank Lalor (Massey), who’s handling the homicide case, fails to add up the clues.
Why we love it
Lang conjures a nightmare world of paranoia and suspicion in this classic film noir penned by Nunnally Johnson. Playing against type, Robinson is terrific as Wanley, a staid academic who comments to his friends how stodgy life after 40 has become. Obviously, the otherworldly apparition of Alice Reed, coolly played by Bennett, is a mere precursor to just how complicated his existence is about to become, especially when her dead beau's friend (Dan Duryea) begins to hound him. Dark and fevered, “Window” resolves with a twist you won't forget.