“Love…love…you have to watch out for yourself…that’s the trouble with you…. You just don’t know what kind of world this is.” Anna (Yvonne De Carlo) confides this philosophy of life to her former lover, Steve Thompson (Burt Lancaster), as she walks out on him with the heist money. She is shot by Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), her present husband, as we hear the wail of police sirens and “The End” comes up on the screen with stark Miklos Rozsa chords emphasizing the gruesome scene of two bodies entwined in death.

This is Criss Cross, Robert Siodmak’s 1949 tale of love, murder, robbery, and vengeance shot in glorious black-and-white, a solid film noir made on location in Los Angeles. Steve Thompson has returned to his hometown a year after his divorce from Anna and finds himself in a nightclub, The Roundup, where he courted his ex-wife. Anna is there, dancing a rumba with wild abandon (with a very young, “Anthony” Curtis); Steve cuts in and is overwhelmed by her sensuality. He is still in love with her, even though she is going to marry the club’s shady owner, Slim Dundee. Anna is after wealth, which Dundee can provide, but in no way is it a substitute for the physical relationship she shared with Steve. The two become lovers again after Steve runs into Anna at Union Station, where she is seeing Dundee off on a business trip. Anna shows Steve some bruises, proving to him that marriage to Dundee is no bargain. Steve’s good friend Pete Ramirez (Stephen McNally), a cop,

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