After the critical success of his first film Applause, which was shot in New York City, Rouben Mamoulian went to Hollywood and made City Streets.
Grade: B+
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Theatrical release poster
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Based on original screenplay from novelist Dashiell Hammett, this urban crime drama features the very young and gorgeous Gary Cooper in one of his best performances to date (before he became star).
In the impressive opening shot, we see a close-up of Sylvia Sidney’s face, with one eye closed, before the camera pulls back to reveal a fairground shooting-gallery.
Sideny plays Nan, a girl whose stepfather Pop Cooley (character actor Guy Kibbee) is a henchman of the beer-running racketeer Big Boy Maskal (Hungarian born actor Paul Lukas).
Upon meeting the Kid (Cooper), a lanky Westerner employed in the carnival, she falls hard for him. She urges him to join the racketeers for the easy money to be made, but he refuses.
Pop Cooley is assigned to “bump off” Blackie, because Maskal wants Field’s girl Agnes. Pop takes Blackie for a “ride” and is later freed on an alibi supplied by Agnes. When Nan refuses to “squeal,” she is sent to prison. The Kid joins the racketeers, hoping to save Nan. But while in jail, Nan, now a disillusioned femme, gets furious when she learns about the Kid’s decision.
Upon release, Nan tries to convince the Kid to leave the gangsters, but he refuses. He then crosses the racketeer and then outwits his henchmen, who are plotting to “get” him.
To prevent this, Nan meets Maskal, begging him to throw the Kid out of the gang. Agnes enters and shoots Maskal for betraying her, then locks Nan inside. Nan is found with Maskal’s body and is taken for a ride. The Kid foils the gangster’s plot and rescues Nan.
Mamoulian, a technically innovative director, was proud that, despite the looming menace, the audience never sees any killings or other acts violence on screen.
Cast in a role originally intended for the IT girl Clara Bow, Sylvia Sidney renders a good performance in a part that later typecast her as a woman who’s downtrodden Depression victim.
The use of “voice-over” was a startling visual and sound innovation: Mamoulian recorded two separate sound channels on a single film segment to create the effect. The Kid’s voice is heard speaking when the screen shows only Nan’s face, superimposing Cooper’s spoken thoughts on that of Sydney’s as dramatic device. Paramount warned that audiences would be disconcerted by hearing a character speak without seeing the actor’s lip, but Mamoulian insisted that viewers would be able to integrate and sound and visual elements.
Historian Tom Milne distinguishes City Streets from other violent gangster films of the 1930s, such as the Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932). The stylized treatment of the topic resembles Paramount’s and von Sternberg’s 1927 silent classic Underworld. Like Underworld, the film is essentially a love story and a morality play, as the couple struggle to rise above a degenerate society, and the country to which they eventually flee is meant to represent a better world of harmony and hope.
Early film noir?
Carl Macek, writing in “Film Noir”: Heavy chiaroscuro lighting and the dark milieu of the underworld reinforce the noir attitude of Hammett’s expert characaterizations.”
Cast:
Gary Cooper (The Kid)
Sylvia Sidney (Nan)
Paul Lukas (Big Boy Maskal)
William “Stage” Boyd (McCoy)
Guy Kibbee (Pop Cooley)
Stanley Fields (Blackie)
Wynne Gibson (Agnes)
Betty Sinclair (Pansy)
Barbara Leonard (Girl)
Terry Carroll (Esther March)
Edward Le Saint (Shooting Gallery Patron)
Robert Homans (Inspector)
Willard Robertson (Detective)
Hal Price (Shooting Gallery Onlooker)
Ethan Laidlaw (Killer at prison)
George Regas (Machine-gunner)
Bob Kortman (Servant)
Leo Willis (Henchman)
Bill Elliott (Dance Extra)
Credits:
Paramount
Director: Rouben Mamoulian.
Producer: E. Lloyd Sheldon.
Screenplay by Oliver H.P. Garrett, based on an original screenplay by Dashiell Hammett.
Adaptation: Max Marcin.
Photographer: Lee Garmes.
Editor: William Shea.
Sound Recorders: J.A. Goodrich, M.M. Paggie.
Running time: 82 Minutes.
Released April 18, 1931.
