Side Street (1949)

Film: Side Street (1949)

Stars: Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, James Craig, Paul Kelly, Jean Hagen, Paul Harvey, Adele Jergens

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Hollywood used to do a better job of pairing actors who were successful together again, not in sequels but in another story.  In a different era, for example, we'd for sure have another film with Sydney Sweeney & Glen Powell in production by now given the surprise success of Anyone But You.  This was the case for 1949's Side Street, which reunited They Live By Night stars Farley Granger & Cathy O'Donnell, though for an odd reason.  They Live By Night is generally considered one of the more important film noirs of the late-1940's, inspiring New Hollywood films like Breathless and Bonnie and Clyde, but it was a flop, one that was only rescued decades later by film critics.  As a result, I'm kind of a surprised that Granger & O'Donnell got brought back together so soon-possibly given that film was released in August of 1948 and today's film, the second (and last) pairing of Granger & O'Donnell was released just the next year, they were too far in to stop production, but honestly for a film noir from MGM, it's unlikely that was the case.  What I will say, though, may surprise you-I wasn't wowed by They Live By Night (you can see my review of it below), but was far more intrigued by Side Street, the lesser-known pairing of the two actors.

(Spoilers Ahead) There's a lot of plot here, but the first thing to know is that Joe Norson (Granger) is not the smartest guy in the room (he's played by Farley Granger, though, so he is the prettiest guy in the room).  He has recently lost his job and during his part-time gig as a mail carrier, he steals what he thinks is $200 from a lawyer's office so that his very pregnant wife Ellen (O'Donnell) can give birth in a private room.  It turns out, though, that he has accidentally stolen $30,000, in this case from a corrupt attorney who is working with organized crime.  This sets off a chase, with Joe trying to outrun not just the attorney, but also several blackmailers, one of whom has been killed, and whomever has the cash, is likely who the police are going to pin the murder upon.

Granger's quite good here.  I think Granger is maybe the hottest guy (give or take Marlon Brando) in classic cinema, but his sexuality is rarely put to good use, with the exception of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train.  This is mostly the case in Side Street, save for a really remarkable interlude toward the end of the picture.  As part of his plan, he has to seduce a mobster's girlfriend, Harriet Stinton (played by Jean Hagen).  Hagen is amazing in this movie.  For those of you who only know her as Lina Lamont, this is a total 180 from that comic turn, but is truly worthy of such comparisons.  She is clearly heartbroken, desperate for her scumbag of a boyfriend to love her, but really she wants anyone to love her.  In the one moment in the film where he seems to know what to do, Joe flirts with her, using his young guy sex appeal to try to win her trust.  In real life Hagen was just two years older than Granger, but while both are gorgeous here, he looks much younger and it reads as him trying to trick a fading beauty.  Harriet's fate is particularly nasty after she betrays Granger-she gets strangled, mid-embrace, by her crooked boyfriend, literally giving her the kiss of death.

Nothing else in Side Street can compete with this, and honestly nothing else needs to.  O'Donnell is not good (she's too mousy, and Granger isn't dangerous enough to add intrigue to them both in the way Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum might've when paired with such an actress), and the movie has maybe one too many characters to really sell this as a classic.  But see this (and you should) just for the fading glamour of Jean Hagen, playing her tragic femme fatale for every penny this script is worth.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

The Man from Laramie (1955)

Film: The Man from Laramie (1955)

Stars: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell, Alex Nicol

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We've jumped about a bit with Stewart, last week discussing some of the films he made in the late-1950's with Alfred Hitchcock, attempting to escape in some respects the persona with which he'd long been associated.  This week, we're still in the mid-1950's, but I want to discuss a bit what happened in the latter half of Stewart's career.  Today's film was his last movie with Anthony Mann, but it was hardly his final western.  In the decades that followed, that was mostly what Stewart would make, but with less assured results.  The actor worked steadily throughout the 1960's & 1970's, but usually in cameos that traded on his star power.  More so, he appeared in flops, including an ill-fated eponymous television show (did you know there was a Jimmy Stewart sitcom in the 1970's?!?).  He made only two classics during this period, both of which starred John Wayne, both of which were westerns, and one of which is a personal favorite (hence why we aren't ending with it): The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Shootist.  Today, though, we're going to discuss Stewart's eighth and final film with Anthony Mann, The Man from Laramie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Will Lockhart (Stewart), who is delivering supplies from Laramie to Coronado, a desolate western town, while also trying to find the man who led to Apaches killing his brother by selling them guns.  Concurrently, we have a wealthy landowner named Alec Waggoman (Crisp) who is haunted by the thought that someone is going to kill his ne'er-do-well son Dave (Nicol), whom he loves but cannot control.  Dave after shooting many of Will's mules after he mistakenly takes salt from one of Alec's lakes, gets into a fist fight with him, and while most of the town wants Will to leave, he wants to find the gun runner who led to his brother's death.  He ends up in a course collision with much of the Waggoman family, including their attractive niece Barbara (O'Donnell) and a hired hand Vic Hansbro (Kennedy) who is jealous of Dave since Vic has been truly loyal to Alec.  As we continue, it becomes clear that Dave & Vic were the reasons for Will's brother dying, and both end up dead before the credits roll, though neither by the hand of Will Lockhart, who doesn't have the stomach for cold-blooded murder.

The movie is glorious, and that starts with the cinematography.  Shot by 18-time Oscar nominee Charles Lang, this was one of the first westerns shot on CinemaScope, the film is beautiful, desert shots (such as the gorgeous final shootout between Stewart & Kennedy), the movie looks sensational, and is a fitting end to Mann & Stewart's partnership.  Stewart is once again excellent in this mold, learning a bit from his previous iterations as a cowboy by leaning into the "last ride of a legend" motif.  You know from the opening scenes that he's going to end this standing tall, but also that he will never rest, a wandering spirit of the west.  The film suffers in its supporting actors, particularly with a miscast O'Donnell & Crisp, but Stewart's performance and all of the technical aspects are first rate, and I loved the title track.

Jimmy Stewart, as I mentioned above, continued making movies, some of them successfully, well into the late 1980's, though he worked sparingly.  The only really important movie of his post-1960 era was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which is his best western and brought him face-to-face with John Wayne.  I wrote about this the first time I saw it ten years ago, and it's only grown in my estimation since then as one of the great movies of the year, and one of the bitterest endings in all of Classical Hollywood.  Next month, we're going to talk about another actor whose modern mythos is associated with a gentle, kind figure, one that Oscar also noticed, but whose fame throughout the 1950's came from wearing a cowboy hat.

OVP: The Naked Spur (1953)

Film: The Naked Spur (1953)

Stars: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker, Millard Mitchell

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

His work with Anthony Mann opened up a new chapter in Jimmy Stewart's career, and one that led to far more interesting films being made by the actor in the 1950's than he had made in the 1940's.  This included Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, which dealt with the subject of rape (groundbreaking for its time), and won Stewart his fifth & final Oscar nomination.  But more importantly in film history, this is the decade when he worked repeatedly with Alfred Hitchcock.  Stewart's relationship with Hitchcock actually preceded the 1950's, when he appeared in 1948's Rope for the director, but critics at the time were divided on the film, and on Stewart in the lead role (I tend to agree with them that he is poorly chosen, and perhaps a star with more natural sexuality onscreen like John Garfield would've been a more suitable choice).  However, his work in the 1950's is harder to dismiss.  Between 1954 and 1958, he made Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo, an enviable list from the standpoint of 2022 even if it wasn't quite as glowing in 1959.  It's hard to believe now, but Vertigo, which is considered by many to be the greatest film ever made (and features Stewart in what is likely his best acting performance), was disliked by critics at the time.  While there were hiccups critically & commercially for Stewart in the decade, it's hard not to look at what he did in the 1950's and think of it as the best qualitative chapter of his career, and that includes our movie today, the chilling The Naked Spur.

(Spoilers Ahead) In the wake of the Civil War, Howard Kemp (Stewart) chances upon Jesse Tate (Mitchell), a grizzled prospector, and he makes a deal with him.  If he can help him find the man he's looking for, Ben Vandergroat (Ryan), he will give him $20.  As they move, they come across first Roy Anderson (Meeker, brilliantly sexy in this role & threatening to steal the entire movie in all of his scenes), a morally questionable former cavalryman, and then they come across both Vandergroat & his female companion Lina Patch (Leigh).  It is revealed at this point that Howard tricked Jesse, as Ben is worth far more than $20...there's a $5000 reward for his capture, and so, after some debate, Jesse, Howard, & Roy decide to split the money by bringing Ben into town, getting their reward and letting him hang in the process.  Along the way, though, they face the difficulty of Ben pitting them against one another, and Lina, who believes in Ben's innocence, trying to convince them to stop the endeavor entirely.

The Naked Spur feels like a setup for a western, and indeed what I just profiled is only about 30 minutes into a 90-minute movie.  But it's worth noting that the film doesn't take the easy way out here.  While there are technically other actors who show up after this in very small, extra work, but instead remains these five performers, as we never actually get to town & see them collecting the reward.  Instead what we get is a chamber play of sorts, filled with psychological drama, betrayal, and trauma, as we learn that Howard was once betrayed by the woman he loved & lost his ranch, which is what he's trying to get back with this arrest.  It works really well playing this as a bottle episode of a western, us never leaving the shifting dynamics of these five as they learn more about each other and shift alliances, frequently to their doom.  Westerns almost never got nominated for writing Oscars in the 1940's & 50's...it's a testament to how perfectly this is structured that this one did.

I had planned on introducing Stewart this week with Hitchcock because you can't discuss Stewart without discussing Hitchcock, but I was surprised by how clear the parallels are between his Howard Kemp and Scottie Ferguson, his character in Vertigo.  Both are obsessed with women who betray them, both are given the opportunity to be with a more conventional woman who genuinely loves him, and both want something that they know is impossible.  Plus our love interest is Janet Leigh, star of Hitchcock's most famous film Psycho!  Unlike Scottie, Howard ends up with the woman who loves him in this movie, and it works, but it's a question mark if that will be how this ends, and that tension is brought on by the way that Stewart plays Howard, loose, angry, & miserable...it's hard to see much of George Bailey behind an actor who was clearly stretching his public persona, and doing it beautifully.

Winchester 73 (1950)

Film: Winchester 73 (1950)

Stars: James Stewart, Shelley Winters, Dan Duryea, Stephen McNally, Rock Hudson

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Frequently with legendary actors, we don't think of their careers as having lulls, but with Jimmy Stewart, this was the case by 1950.  Though he starred in what would ultimately be the role he was best-remembered for in 1946 (George Bailey in the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life), the film had a mixed result at the box office and actually was considered a flop when it first ran.  The next few years brought about movies that are considered to be classics today (specifically Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and the film noir classic Call Northside 777), but it was clear a new generation of actors was replacing Stewart, who had not really had a hit film that had captured the public imagination since before the war.  That changed in 1950, though, when Stewart's career opened a new door.  Stewart made what would end up being his first of eight films with Anthony Mann, which would largely be critical & commercial successes throughout the 1950's, and would reimagine the war hero and Frank Capra's everyman type as a classic cowboy, giving him a spot as one of the most important western stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. The film that started this collaboration was Winchester 73.

(Spoilers Ahead) Winchester 73 is one of many, many big screen takes on the famed Dodge City myth, and starts with Lin McAdam (Stewart) and Dutch Henry Brown (McNally) in a shooting contest to win a famed Winchester 73, the best gun in the west.  Lin wins, but is stood up by Dutch in his apartment and has the Winchester 73 stolen from him.  Thus ensues a chase, which involves both men meeting up with a variety of figures, including a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold named Lola (Winters), Waco Johnnie (Duryea), a wild-eyed bandit who kills Lola's boyfriend to be with her, and a group of Native Americans led by Rock Hudson of all people as Young Bull (a case of redface that I didn't know happened until I saw his name buried in the opening credits, one of Hudson's very early films before his eventual breakout in 1954's Magnificent Obsession).  As the film goes, we realize that Lin & Dutch are brothers, and Lin is still angry about Dutch murdering their father years earlier after their dad refused to provide cover for Dutch after a bank robbery.  The film ends with Lin killing Dutch with the titular gun, their feud now ended.

I really liked Winchester 73, I'm going to be honest, and two films into Stewart's partnership with Mann (I watched this month's out of order) I'm thrilled by the movies that they made together.  This film doesn't quite hit the mark of an all-time western classic (the stakes are there, but it doesn't have the harrowing nature that something like Shane or The Searchers would bring to their final showdowns), but it's close.  There's something so magnetic about Stewart in this role.  He's not a natural cowboy.  The "awe shucks" charm that he brought to something like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington isn't absent here, but it adds a mystery to him.  He's kind, but capable of great violence.  Stewart plays with this well, making his Lin a man of honor, but a man who is foremost set on his mission.  It's a great juxtaposition, and likely why the public was drawn to him; he struck a different, more intelligent chord than other western figures like John Wayne & Gary Cooper in the same era.

The rest of the film works really well too.  Sadly we are deprived of a song (side note for those who are not well-versed on westerns of this era-they almost always had a great ballad associated with them sung by someone like Tex Ritter or Frankie Laine), but the cinematography from William Daniels (who won an Oscar for The Naked City) is splendid, crystal clear & deliciously shot in medium close-up.  There's a moment about halfway the movie where Jimmy Stewart sees a just-waking up Shelley Winters, her cleavage as low as you could get it in 1950, and you see the lust before he remembers he's a man of honor all in one take-it's a great moment, and indicative of the kind of knowingness that Mann & Daniels would frequently bring to their work.  Duryea, whom I'm fast-realizing might be the best character actor of the Classical Hollywood era who never got an Oscar nomination, is marvelous as a late addition to the movie as Waco Johnnie, totally unnecessary to the plot, but he plays his villain as lusty & has better chemistry with Winters (who is good but, again, unnecessary, which she complained about when reflected on this movie and said (I'm paraphrasing, but not by much) "all these men were more interested in that gun than a beautiful blonde like me!") than Stewart or any of the other actors.  All-in-all, well worth your time if your first reaction to me saying "Jimmy Stewart" for a theme of westerns was one of surprise.

OVP: The Furies (1950)

Film: The Furies (1950)

Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Huston, Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Stanwyck: click here to learn more about Ms. Stanwyck (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Barbara Stanwyck turned forty right before filming her final Oscar-cited turn in Sorry, Wrong Number, and after that, while she appeared in a number of films, she was never nominated for an Academy Award again.  Unlike actresses like Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, & Joan Crawford, the early 1950's was not filled with one last iconic role to go out on (in Davis & Crawford's case, of course, they'd extend their iconography into the 1960's by taking on each other, but that's a story for a different day).  She instead found herself working in genres atypical for women, particularly westerns, and in genres that generally didn't get women Oscar nominations for westerns (is Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller the only one?).  This is fascinating to me because Stanwyck's career is generally considered to have waned during the 1950's, and box office receipts bear that out.  However, several of her films have since been rescued by critics (and Criterion), one of which is today's film The Furies, an Anthony Mann picture (Mann would direct most of Jimmy Stewart's best westerns, as well as the biblical epic El Cid) which is noted as one of Stanwyck's roles today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about TC Jeffords (Huston), a nasty cattle baron who delights in cutting down the people around him, including the Herrera Family who are squatting on his property.  The one person he seems to generally love is his daughter Vance (Stanwyck), perhaps because she's inherited his cruelty & love of material pleasures.  Vance, though, doesn't hate the Herrera's, and has a romantic flirtation with their son Juan (Roland).  She also is flirting with Rip Darrow (Corey), a more conventional choice for her, but one who doesn't want a woman as headstrong as Vance, whom he dismisses when her father buys him off.  However, when her father marries a gold-digger named Flo Burnett (Anderson) their relationship becomes forlorn because she thinks she'll lose the ranch (the titular Furies), and attacks Flo, who is permanently disfigured as a result.  This sets off a chain of events with TC murdering Juan in front of his mother, and Vance buying up TC's debts from across the land, knowing that she'll win back the ranch in the process.  She gets her revenge, followed by a reconciliation with both Rip & her father, but it's upended when her father is murdered by Juan's mother.  The movie ends with Rip & Vance, now betrothed, burying TC's body on the ranch.

The movie is really good other than the ending.  There's an electricity about it that I loved, with Stanwyck's Vance intended to basically be a femme fatale in the center of a western.  The film was nominated for Best Cinematography, which was a strong choice (those western vistas look great, and there's a lot of work to make what is clearly a sound stage look authentically grand within the house).  The score & editing would've been decent inclusions as well, both sharp work.  However, the ending doesn't function for me.  Huston's character is so cruel you know he has to die, but I don't really think he's earned the hero's ending he receives, and I do wonder if the book this is based on is a bit less generous with all involved (I've never read it, though the Criterion edition does come with a copy of it so maybe I'll get there someday).  It defangs Vance, whom you want to get back at Rip more than get with him, and it feels a bit like that weird comic interlude in The Searchers in the center of what is otherwise a very serious movie.  I could've used more of the sour that made it so intoxicating in the first half.

Stanwyck, Huston, & Anderson are all terrific in this.  Stanwyck, in her viper-blonde mode (I read a review on Letterboxd where they said "never trust Barbara Stanwyck as a blonde" and it's sound advice) is delicious, totally eating up this character, and while 1950 is one of the best lineups Oscar ever assembled (not just the five nominees, but also you've got Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place and Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun), I still will be considering her for that quintet when we get around to the 1950 OVP.  Huston is nasty two years after his Oscar win, and plays TC without a bit of remorse, quickly disowning his daughter & discarding her feelings the second they counter her own.  Anderson is also good.  She holds her own against Stanwyck in their climactic fight, but perhaps even better she has a scene late in the movie where TC asks her for money to save the Furies, and she refuses, talking about how she no longer has her beauty & she knows he doesn't love her and will eventually abandon her.  The only thing that she has to help stave off of the loneliness is her money, and it's a shockingly poignant summation of a character that would've been easy to dismiss as just a gold-digger trying to take out Vance earlier in the movie.  I loved all three, and wish that the film had not been the financial failure it ended up being for Paramount.