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

OVP: Strangers on a Train (1951)

Film: Strangers on a Train (1951)
Stars: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Laura Elliott, Marion Lorne
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roma (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.


When I selected Ruth Roman as our star of the month, one of the main reasons I did so was I wanted to see her most noted film, Strangers on a Train.  I didn't realize at the time that this would be a complicated decision in retrospect.  Roman's time on Strangers was probably a mixed one.  At this point in her (relatively short) career as a leading woman, she'd had a few hits (which we've profiled already here and here), and with this picture she was about to get her closest brush with immortality in what is generally considered to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's best pictures.  However, personally this was a rough shoot for Roman.  She and Hitchcock (who would never work together again) detested each other, with Hitch (after Jack Warner forced him to hire Roman, whom the director thought "lacked sex appeal") frequently harassing her.  Hitchcock was known for his intense, in some cases predatory, treatment of his leading ladies, and one wonders how much Ruth Roman liked being most associated with a film that was hell for her to make.  However, it is impossible to take a look at the career of Roman and not talk about Strangers, so here we are.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on two men who meet by chance on a train (strangers, if you will): Guy Haines (Granger), a tennis star who in in a messy divorce with his cheating wife Miriam (Elliott), and who desperately wants to meet the classy senator's daughter Anne (Roman), and Bruno (Walker), a man who wants to kill his father so that he won't chastise him and will give him his fortune.  Bruno proposes that the two men "swap murders," solving both of their problems, and Guy politely laughs, thinking the man is just being morbidly silly, but in fact Bruno is serious, and takes this chuckle as an agreement to the bargain.  Bruno then does, in fact, kill Miriam (who has refused to grant Guy a divorce, ruining his chances at happiness), and the film unfolds with Bruno essentially blackmailing Guy into trying to commit the murder he didn't really agree to, all-the-while having planted enough suspicion on Guy that he might be able to pin Miriam's murder on the tennis player if he doesn't go along with the plan to kill his father.  The film ends with a chase on a carousel (which apparently didn't use as much trick photography as you'd think, which makes this scene one of the most literally dangerous you'll probably ever see in an actual movie, as a man climbs under an actual moving carousel), and eventually the police reveal, despite him lying with his last breath, that Bruno is in fact the killer of Miriam, exonerating Guy to marry Anne.

The movie is great.  I love Hitchcock in general, and so I was predisposed to this, but probably put it more in the camp of North by Northwest than a film like Vertigo or Notorious (I've never released my personal favorite Hitchcock list on this blog because I'd have to admit to not seeing a few classics, but this puts it right on the cusp of the 4-star brilliant ones and my 5-star beloveds).  Walker is sensational in the role of a lifetime (sadly, he'd die almost immediately after this film so it wasn't a movie that he could capitalize on), and Granger looks sexy as hell as Guy.  Obviously Anne is in love with Guy, but Bruno clearly is also (Hitchcock intended Bruno to be coded as gay, and it works-there's no confusing this for merely a brotherly swapped homicide), but who can blame him-Farley Granger in his tennis whites is the stuff that makes men realize their inclinations.  The film's plot has been so borrowed from that watching it for the first time nearly seventy years later likely doesn't have the same impact that it did in 1951 (you can't fault the movie for that, though-it's not its own fault it was such a landmark), the acting from the likes of Walker is timeless enough it's still sensational.

Roman, our star of the month, continues her curse of having top-billing for supporting parts, and she's good in the film, acting lovely and occasionally getting some interesting scenes (particularly one at the tennis match), but she's no match for her female costars.  Hitchcock's antipathy to her might have been because, for possibly the first time in his filmography, he gave the impossibly gorgeous woman the least interesting part in the picture.  After all, Strangers on a Train is brimming with great supporting turns for the ladies, from Elliott's vicious Miriam to Patricia Hitchcock's brainy-but-oblivious Barbara (proving that nepotism can occasionally advantage the audience) to Lorne's doting, enabling, and probably knowing mother-of-the-murderer.  Roman gets saddled with the love interest and doesn't really have enough script to stand out in a picture filled with standouts.  At this point, Life Magazine had proclaimed "The Rise of Ruth Roman" across its cover, but in looking at her key films of the era, we haven't actually seen her rise to anything other than the woman-behind-the-man.

They Live By Night (1948)

Film: They Live By Night (1948)
Stars: Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, Helen Craig
Director: Nicholas Ray
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

While there have been a lot of movies through the years that have given a spin on the noir (the western noir, the epic noir, the boxing noir), I honestly don't know that I'd ever seen a movie before this month's series that focused on the "teenage love story noir."  They Live by Night, a film from Nicholas Ray (who would seven years later make the quintessential "misunderstood youth" picture Rebel Without a Cause) clearly inspired not only Rebel but also future masterpieces like Bonnie & Clyde or Thelma & Louise, and was a universal enough story it was remade in the mid-1970's with Keith Carradine & Shelley Duvall.  But what struck me while watching it, once I got used to an unexpected spin on the genre, was how good (and how sexy) Farley Granger is as Arthur "Bowie" Bowers in the lead.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is relatively simple to follow and goes with a formula that, while somewhat unique at the time, has been borrowed to varying degrees in the years since.  Bowie is a criminal down on his luck after being convicted of a murder he didn't commit.  He's joined by One-Eye Mobley (Da Silva, whose real life acting career was about to be destroyed by the blacklist) and T-Dub (Flippen), and they rob a bank.  While hiding out, Bowie falls in love with Keechie (O'Donnell), and vows to give her an honest life, running away from the criminals, who then find him and make him come back for "one last heist" that goes sour, resulting in T-Dub's death & Chicamaw getting arrested.  Bowie meets a similarly tragic end when he is shot up while trying to rejoin Keechie after being sold out by his landlady Mattie (Craig).

The movie itself is okay.  Ray is clearly working out some of the kinks of teenage love, and while the film is bleak, it's not as richly bleak as your typical film noir, almost entirely due to a miscast O'Donnell as Keechie.  O'Donnell, best known to modern audiences as Homer's girlfriend Wilma in The Best Years of Our Lives or as Tirzah in Ben-Hur, feels out of her element in a role that requires her to be tougher and grittier than most of her best performances would indicate she could pull off.  Keechie is mousy, and it's hard to see why Bowie is so desperate to please her other than perhaps her taking his virginity (sorry to be crass, but it's clearly an unspoken plot point).

But that doesn't mean there isn't something very important to see here-Farley Granger is phenomenal as Bowie, giving a clear prototype for James Dean in the years ahead.  A sensitive thug, he's gorgeous, naive, someone who lets his emotions light his way even when that's a bad thing, but it's also what makes you fall in love with him.  Blessed with expressive eyes and the poutiest mouth you've ever seen, he's a matinee idol in a form I don't know I've ever seen in a picture this early in cinema's history, and a forefront for the kind of roles that Dean & Marlon Brando would turn into legend in the 1950's.

Previous Films in the Series: Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep

OVP: Small Town Girl (1953)

Film: Small Town Girl (1953)
Stars: Jane Powell, Farley Granger, Ann Miller, S.Z. Sakall, Robert Keith, Bobby Van, Billie Burke
Director: Laszlo Kardos
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"My Flaming Heart")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

With the Oscar Viewing Project, frequently I find myself stumbling across films that I have never even heard of, even with spending most of my life perusing the annals of movie history, and it's always something I find as kind of a delight.  I genuinely love movies (regardless of the era) and would happily watch one every day until the day I leave this earth without any qualms or worries about boredom.  As a result, I occasionally go on a bit of a binge, and did that this weekend watching four, and am already itching to start a fifth this evening before going into a pantheon of Olympics.  Before I get there, though, I want to talk about the sweet, lovely Small Town Girl which I caught Sunday afternoon.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is something of a trifle, one of those below-the-line type films that major stars like Jane Powell seemed to churn out at a staggering pace during the 1950's.  She stars as Cindy, the daughter of the local judge (Keith) who has sentenced the handsome playboy Rick (Granger) to thirty days in jail for speeding through town with his Broadway star girlfriend Lisa Bellmount (Miller).  While in town, Rick begins to find the country life quaint, and after nearly freezing Cindy to death in a coat closet (long story), he falls in love with her on a Manhattan night out, eventually breaking her from her boyfriend Ludwig (Van) who is happily pursuing stardom, and it's implied, Lisa, and they fall madly in love all while finding a few moments for singing and hoofing.

It's not a difficult-to-predict plotline, of course, and there's nothing here that's intensely groundbreaking, but the movie is innocent fun.  For those who are seeing his name on a musical, yes, Farley Granger does sing, but he isn't particularly strong at it and all of the actual musical numbers are done by Powell, Van, and Miller.  His principle role here is to be devastatingly handsome (he is, and is one of those guys that would still be considered handsome even by modern standards) and kind of a cad, and he relishes in both, while Powell is saintly with spunk, and since that's pretty much the description of every Jane Powell role, she holds up admirably.  My favorite parts were the two supporting lovers, but mostly because I have a joyous and undying love for Ann Miller (literally my favorite moment in any musical's opening credits is when I see Miller's name, as I know I'm going to like it), and Bobby Van is wonderfully charming as a Broadway-loving beau.  This film features the most famous moment of Van's career, where he acrobatically hops through town for four straight minutes, jumping repeatedly.  It's wildly entertaining even if it sounds a bit loopy, and worth catching on YouTube even if you can't get access to the picture.

The film only received one Oscar nomination, one of those random Best Song citations, and it's completely outside the tone of the film and really feels oddly more-suited for another film.  The song, sung by Nat King Cole in a cameo in the picture, is a marvelous piece of music.  It's rich, lovely, and perfectly-suited for Cole's love-lost vocals, but it's completely alien to the rest of the picture.  The film is a lighthearted musical comedy, and this is a song that you sing to Celia Johnson while she's contemplating a love affair, not while two young paramours are on a first date in the city.  Half of me thought that they must have had Cole under contract or the studio had this piece of music and wanted to profit off of it as a single, but it feels very out-of-place in the film.  If we were judging solely based on the merits of the song I'd give it five stars (I'm buying it on iTunes right now), but as it pulls me almost entirely out of the picture, I have to dock some of that Oscar love.

Still, it's a fun little picture, one I wouldn't have seen without the OVP so once again the breadth of this endeavor is rewarded.  If you've seen the film, what are your thoughts?  Were you equally charmed by Van and Miller, or were you all about our principle leads?  Did you like "My Flaming Heart" or find it an unusual detour?  And just in general-what's your favorite Jane Powell musical?  Share in the comments!