Fritz Lang’s underrated noir elegantly toys with noir tropes and subverts our expectations.

Though the action pivots on blackmail and murder, the heart of the movie is a regular guy's struggle with the inner violence of sexual frenzy and the outer violence of war.

Fritz Lang, director, goes overboard in his effort to create mood. Long focusing on locomotive speeding and twisting on the rails is neither entertaining nor essential to the plot.

Lang twists and toys with everything his audience knows about film noir. And he does this largely through the performances of his actors.