two-paths-structure-scarlet-street Scarlet Street (1945)
Quadrant: Worse tools, insufficient — tragedy. Chris adopts worse tools after the midpoint (deny what he saw, propose to her anyway, kill her when she laughs, let Johnny burn for it) and the world destroys him from the inside.
Initial approach: Treat Kitty's affection as real and his second life as a love affair — give her money, paint her, hope she loves him back.
Post-midpoint approach: Refuse the truth he's just been shown. Possess Kitty as wife by force of will, and when force of will fails, by force.
Equilibrium. The Hogarth dinner. Chris is given a gold watch for twenty-five years as JJ Hogarth's cashier; he watches Hogarth slip out of the banquet with a young woman in his car and asks Charlie what it would be like to be loved by a young girl like that. Stable state of containment, named in the same scene as the gap.
Inciting Incident. The Greenwich Village rescue. Walking home, Chris drives off a man striking a woman on the rainy sidewalk, escorts the woman — Kitty March — to coffee at Tiny's, and tells her he is a painter. The "assailant" was her boyfriend Johnny. The disruption is tailored to a gallant who has never been gallant.
Resistance / Debate. A short stretch of letters and second-thoughts. Kitty writes to Chris; Chris reads the letter at home with Adele in the next room. He half-talks himself out of it (the man is married, the woman is a stranger), half-into it (she's an actress, she needs a friend). The hesitation lasts only as long as the cab ride to her apartment.
Commitment. The apartment lease. Chris hands over Adele's stolen insurance-bond money, signs the lease on a Greenwich Village studio "for a friend," and gives Kitty the keys. From this scene forward Chris has two lives, and the one he tells nobody about is the one he intends to live.
Rising Action / initial approach. Chris paints Kitty in the studio. Adele complains about the household budget; Chris steals more. Kitty plays the affectionate ingenue when Chris is present and the cynical chiseler when he is not. Johnny camps in the studio, drinks Chris's liquor, calls Kitty "Lazy Legs." The first proposal is half-spoken — Chris asks, Kitty stalls, Chris confesses he's married, Kitty seizes on the marriage as a reason to defer. The initial approach (give-and-hope) keeps deferring its own test.
Escalation 1. Janeway. The art critic stops at a sidewalk vendor's stall, recognizes the work, and tracks the painter to the studio; Johnny tells him Kitty is the artist, and Kitty receives him under that lie. The deception becomes a public success; gallery shows are arranged; Chris paints faster; the embezzlement from Hogarth begins. The bigger the lie works, the more brittle the seam between Chris's two lives.
Midpoint. The kiss discovery. Chris stops by the studio without warning and finds Kitty wrapped around Johnny on the couch, "Jeepers, I love you, Johnny" audible from the doorway. He backs out without being seen. The pretense collapses in front of him. The initial approach has reached the place where its truth is shown — Kitty does not love him and never has — and the scene's compressed running time is exactly the length of the shock.
Falling Action / new approach. Chris does not retreat. Earlier the same day, Higgins — Adele's first husband, supposed dead — has reappeared and tried to extort Chris; Chris has paid him off and engineered Higgins's exposure to Adele, freeing himself technically to marry. Now, after the kiss, he goes back to the apartment late at night to propose. The post-midpoint approach is locked: deny the kiss happened, possess Kitty as wife.
Escalation 2. The proposal in the bedroom. Chris stands at the foot of Kitty's bed and asks her to marry him. The mockery escalates the new approach to its breaking stress almost immediately: Kitty laughs in his face, calls him an idiot, tells him she has wanted to laugh in his face since the day they met, says he is old and ugly and she is sick of him.
Climax. The icepick. Chris seizes the icepick (borrowed earlier from a neighbor) and stabs Kitty through the bedclothes. The post-midpoint approach is tested at maximum stakes: can he overpower the truth? The body answers no. He drops the pick, steps over the spilled box, and walks out as Johnny returns to the building. The corruption has produced a corpse and not a wife.
Wind-Down. Higgins phones in an anonymous tip; Johnny is arrested with Kitty's car and ring; the trial finds him guilty; Chris perjures himself on the stand by claiming he only copied Kitty's work. Johnny is executed. Chris is fired from Hogarth's after the embezzlement is found; Adele leaves him for the resurrected Higgins; Chris attempts to hang himself in a flophouse and is cut down. Five-plus years later, on a Christmas evening, Chris drifts past a Fifth Avenue gallery as Kitty's "Self-Portrait" is sold to Dellarowe for $10,000. He walks on into the snow with the lovers' voices (Kitty's "Jeepers, I love you, Johnny," Johnny's "Lazy Legs") repeating in his head. The new equilibrium is a haunting, and the painting he made is a stranger's prize. The legal system has failed to punish him; the punishment is total.