The Woman in the Window

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Men of our years have no business playing around with any adventure that they can avoid."

Fritz Lang's 1944 Film Noir, one of the first films to be so called. Married, middle-aged psychology professor Richard Wanley falls in lust with a provocative portrait of a young woman. When the portrait's model, a budding Femme Fatale, catches him ogling it, she invites him up to her apartment. The two are interrupted by her boyfriend, who tries to strangle Richard, and Richard kills him in self defense. Now the two must try to quietly dispose of the body to avoid scandal, but are hampered by their lack of trust for each other. Complications include Richard's friend, a district attorney who investigates the man's disappearance, and a third party scheming to blackmail them both.

While relatively unsophisticated by today's standards, and hampered by the Hays Code, the film was moderately well-regarded in its day for its convincing portrayal of an ordinary man driven to heinous crime by one bad decision.


Tropes used in The Woman in the Window include: