La Rue de la mort

"Side Street" is a stylish, if convoluted murder mystery about a failed small-time business man (Joe Norson) who is tempted into committing a robbery. Unfortunately the money he takes belongs to a couple of ruthless blackmailers, who aren't impressed when Joe offers to return it - mainly because the "friend" he left it with for safe-keeping helped himself to it. From then on, everything Joe tries gets him deeper into trouble.

Over-long and over-complicated, but competently made and in best film noir style makes good use of light and shade. Conveys well the general seediness and desperation of small-timers trying to make the big time in New York.

Very watchable, not least for Jean Hagen as the vamp who sets the guys up.

It's always fun to watch Farley Granger sweat bullets over a screw-up. This time the part-time letter carrier stumbles upon a quick way to pick up a couple of hundred bucks so that his pregnant wife can have all the good things in life, namely a private room at the hospital. When he ends up with a bit more cash than he bargains for, he begins to behave every bit as stupidly and nonsensically as you would expect him to. Anthony Mann skillfully keeps the usual suspect noir elements in the mix. Jean Hagen plays the saloon singer who prefers to drink her meals at the improbable club Les Artistes. James Craig plays the big lug with a shady past and the police detectives including the frog throated Charles McGraw have plenty of colorful characters to question. But it's Farley Granger who keeps the ball rolling. You never know what dumb move he'll make next.

Tight plot, good acting, sustained suspense, but above all, terrific shots of NYC. We were given a tour of lower Manhattan, including Wall Street (where the movie ends), the City Hall area, Greenwich Village, and the Lower East Side. The photography was dark, gritty, and realistic, and we current and former New Yorkers are given a visual treat by Anthony Mann.

Side Street opens with narration that is practically omniscient, or at least as much as a New York City cop can get, and put over a very explicitly edited sequence showing various workers and people all across the city. Then it moves right into the saga of Joe (as in 'Average Joe' one might think), who is a postal delivery man who gets tempted by greed when he realizes the same amount is left in a drawer of one of the people he drops off for- $200- which would be just enough to get some new things for his wife and their kid on the way. He takes what's in there (a little grin for when he finds the crowbar to pry open the drawer as a cat watches), but later discovers it's $30,000, which as the narrator tells us is "much too much" for Joe to even think about ever having. He hides it, but it gets switched around from the bartender he left it with, and a nefarious criminal is out to get it as well, who originally left it in the drawer. Joe is racked with guilt, but can't turn himself in all the way: he'll do into part of the seedy underbelly to get it back and clear his name.

And so goes one of those stories that one might find under the dictionary if one went to look for B-noir archetypes (A-noir would probably be Double Indemnity, if it could be considered as such). Even if the femme fatale is reduced to a supporting role (Jean Hagen as the floozy Harriet, a nightclub singer who has a great scene with Granger's Joe), you've got the existential protagonist who's down on his luck and can't stand being a criminal for too long, and the cops who are out to get him and whomever, and the real villain (George played by James Craig fairly typically) who is the most desperate of all to escape at all costs. Granger and O'Connell come close to doing a reprisal of their parts in They Live By Night, only this time with the complication of a baby thrown in right away, and the sides of good conscience always present except for an instance (really amusing) when she screams on the phone to Joe "RUN, RUN AWAY" when prodded to talk him out of what he's doing by the cops.

A lot of this, to those who are only somewhat familiar with the attitude of a solid noir thriller, isn't too surprising, and comes close to being average in story material. But it's heightened terrifically by Anthony Mann's direction; it would be one thing if material like this, which could be found in any pulp mystery magazine of the period for ten cents, was filmed with only competence and some skill in the storytelling. But many of the images in Side Street are indelible and essential for the sub-genre. If for nothing else it's a tour-de-force as far as pure film-making goes, as shots in the shadows are incredible (I loved the nightclub scene in the first images, cutting back and forth between Joe and Harriet), and the editing to go along with it is taut and hard-edged for the period and budget, particularly in the climactic chase through New York City's downtown areas. And, if nothing else should strike as a reason to see it, as far as NYC movies go it's a keeper, with the feeling as gritty as possible through the use of real streets and people and cars and accidents and dark alleys.

So who does impulsive thief and part-time mail carrier Joe Norson (Granger) entrust with the $30,000 he's just stolen? Why that well-known paragon of virtue, the friendly neighborhood barkeep, of course. Then, when the latter disappears, a lot richer, guess what-- Joe is surprised! Let's hope the baby his wife just delivered got her genes instead of his. Now Joe gets to chase after the money before either the cops or the crooks get him first. Frankly, my money's on the crooks who certainly know how to surprise us with a broken-down lounge singer (Hagen). But then this is Production Code 1950 with the sweetfaced Granger, so better bet on the kid.

This is Dore Schary's MGM playing catch-up with post-war noir, and they've hired the best— director Anthony Mann. That means the New York street scene never looked grittier, nor the great stone canyons more threatening. And that car chase down empty city corridors looks downright science-fiction eerie. Too bad they've saddled Mann with boring cops and a bad guy (Craig) about as scary as a TV salesman. And was there ever an actress whose sheer sweetness could melt the screen faster than O'Donnell. Together with the artless Granger, Mann's tough-guy cynicism never stood a chance. The visuals tell one story; the characters another. This is hard-shell noir with the softest of cores, but will still keep you stapled to the screen.