La via della morte

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.

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" 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.

A dazzling aerial shot taken high above the Empire State Building opens Anthony Mann's Side Street, and, throughout the movie, glimpses of that New York obelisk recur – sometimes dark and menacing, sometimes caught at the vanishing point of an urban canyon. It's a subtle image of the wide gulf on a narrow island between the pride and power of the haves and the borderline, hand-to-mouth lives of the have-nots for whom it's a distant and alien totem.

War veteran Farley Granger tries to make ends meet by shouldering a mail bag part-time; he and his pregnant wife Cathy O'Donnell (the pair reunited from the previous year's They Live By Night) live in a bedroom of his folks' railroad flat. Delivering one day to a shyster lawyer (Edmon Ryan), he spots a few big bills strewn carelessly about; the next, when he finds the office empty, he succumbs to temptation, only to find that the couple of hundred he thought he copped is really about $30-grand. Out of his depth, he wraps up the cash and gives it to a bartender to keep, while he checks into a fleabag hotel to think things out.

The money's a payoff in Ryan's blackmail racket, whose chief lure is Adele Jergens (misnamed `Lucky,' as she's soon fished out of the river). When Granger decides to come clean and return the money, Ryan denies all knowledge of it (it could link him to Jergen's murder). But he sets his loose cannon of a goon (James Craig) to retrieve the cash any way he can. Granger finds that his trusty barkeep has absconded with his package; when he tracks him down, he finds him dead, too.

A cadre of police assigned to the murder (Charles McGraw and Paul Stewart among them) thinks Granger's the prime suspect, so he has to turn sleuth to clear himself. His trail leads him to a Village dive where one of the numbers in Craig's little black book (Jean Hagen) croons `Easy to Love....'

Side Street hews to the classic noir narrative of the average guy caught up in dark forces he can neither understand nor control, and Granger gives it one of his finer performances, perplexed and terrified at what he's unleashed. And while O'Donnell's role is conventional and secondary, Hagen gives her brief sequence as a boozy moth drawn to a fatal flame a poignant spark (Jergens, platinumed and sequined, does her even briefer sequence proud).

To the extent that Mann indulges in social comment, he leaves it to be inferred (the same year, Granger appeared in the far more explicitly leftist Edge of Doom). At the end, the shots of the opening are rhymed with an eagle-eyed view of a police chase through the deserted streets of lower Manhattan early on a Sunday morning. It's a Bullitt-like ending for a movie that, while gripping, shows far more texture and nuance than Bullitt.

Farley Granger dominates this urban crime drama about a man named Joe Norson, a down-on-his-luck mailman who happens on to a wad of cash, and impulsively steals it, not knowing that the money is connected to the murder of a well-known woman. Sensing his mistake, Joe tries to straighten out the situation, but does all the wrong things. In the process, he gets mixed up with thugs. It's Joe's choices that propel the plot.

More than anything else, "Side Street" is a character study of Joe, described by the film's narrator as: "no hero, no criminal, just human like all of us, weak like some of us, foolish like most of us". He's basically a good guy. But he gets tempted. When he yields to the temptation to steal, his whole world unravels.

As with 1940s noir crime dramas, all the characters in "Side Street" seem desperate, frightened, and unhappy. They're like rats in a maze. And the film's setting in lower Manhattan really accentuates that boxed in, trapped, claustrophobic feeling.

The B&W cinematography is excellent. From wide shots to close-ups, from low-angle to very high-angle, the variety of camera shots keeps the visuals interesting. Overhead shots of Manhattan at the beginning are among the best I have seen for such an old movie. Lighting is noir-based, consistent with crime films of that era.

My only complaint is that some of the secondary characters are a tad difficult to keep track of, a fault of the script. But a second viewing clears things up.

Beautifully photographed on location in lower Manhattan with its maze of narrow side streets, "Side Street" is a well-made film with an interesting story about a regular guy, trapped in a literal maze between tall buildings and a thematic maze of difficult choices. Farley Granger gives a fine performance, as does Cathy O'Donnell, his long-suffering wife.