Lang along with Bennett and her husband, producer Walter Wanger, liked the result so well that all of the aforementioned teamed up again after the German director formed a production company with Wanger and Bennett.
They made what amounted to a shrewdly calculated sequel with "Scarlett Street" in 1945. Robinson played a henpecked husband turned painting genius who was exploited by the charms of Bennett and ruthless opportunism of Duryea.
Lang united with newcomer film producer Bert Freidlob to direct two films that thematically captured America in the fifties. Since Lang made "The Blue Gardenia" on a shoestring budget over a brief period of time, he underrated its raw power as a well paced dramatic chronicler of the period.
"The Blue Gardenia" was released in 1953 at the height of the McCarthy witch hunt anti-Communist paranoia. Anne Baxter as an innocent victim is caught up in a wave of frenzy to find the killer of playboy artist Raymond Burr.
The newspaper columnist with whom Baxter becomes romantically involved, Richard Conte, leads the crusade to find the young woman suspected of killing Burr with the fixated masses hanging on every word he writes.
The 1956 release "While the City Sleeps" unveils ruthless competition amid a fifties' burgeoning New York City based corporate media empire.
In the process of seeking to win the company prize of a lush promotion from his colleagues, Dana Andrews as a television commentator and columnist taunts serial killer John Barrymore Jr. In his anxiety to snare the murderer of young single women, Andrews convinces his fiancée Sally Forrest to serve as bait and entice the killer into the open.
Lang displayed the genius of providing cinema success within tight budgetary restraints in the Hollywood fifties just as he demonstrated his powers over higher budgeted spectacles earlier in his career in Berlin with "Metropolis" and "M."
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