Graine de faubourg

No matter how depressing this film appears to begin with, it's a great film and much ahead of its time. It's like a documentary probing the gang mentality of youngsters getting brought up to become good fellas and worse, and there are many aspects to the drama, one being that of the teachers, who really have a hard time and sometimes can't control their own classes. It's a social drama as well, Thelma Ritter has a poignant part as the worried mother, and Frankie's little sister has an important part also. Everything about the film is professional, and they are all convincing, from the poor people of the shabby back streets of Brooklyn to the policemen, the gangsters, and most striking of all is perhaps the character of "Crazy" whose real name is Theodore (Joshua Shelley), a fantastic clown with a penchant for cruelty. Tony Curtis has only a small minor part but is already Tony Curtis - it's like a hint at a prelude to his later great appearances. The final great dancing hall scene when things are getting really hot is a masterpiece in itself of polyphony bringing out all the true colours of the major actors including the leading gangster, fabulously contrasted against the fervent musicians and their frenzied music. Although I hesitated if I would see it through at all because of its dark depressive elements, I was finally deeply impressed - a great documentary film like all those "Naked City" films.

Sensitive study about the lives and loves of street gangs, their loyalties, and interactions with the police. Peter Fernandez is a bit too feckless as the protagonist, but all others are excellent in the supporting roles. Joshua Shelley and Tony Curtis are standouts. Worth watching

While the noir cycle sensed, in its oblique way, most of the tremors affecting America in the post-war years, one subject that remains conspicuous in its absence is juvenile delinquency. Though alienated youth cropped up now and again – in The Big Night, in Moonrise, in Talk About A Stranger and even, arguably, in The Window – they were viewed as individual cases, not as a social phenomenon. (It wasn't until the cycle had largely petered out that such films as The Blackboard Jungle and The Wild One emerged in the mid-1950s.)

One exception was City Across The River, based on Irving Shulman's novel The Amboy Dukes. Though noirish in its look and urban setting, it's probably safe to call it a social-message movie (as was Nicholas Ray's Knock On Any Door, of the same year). It takes us to the slums of Brooklyn at a time when slums were slums and when conventional wisdom held that the root of juvenile delinquency was the turn-of-the-century tenements themselves – the physical plant, not the inculturated attitudes that perpetuate the culture of poverty and crime.

Peter Fernandez plays the central character of the story, a teen-ager whose parents work holidays and double-shifts to make ends meet (his mom is Thelma Ritter). But he hangs around with members of a `club' called The Dukes (among them `Anthony' Curtis), whose older members seem to be rising lieutenants in the world of petty crime. Of course, in accordance with the official idiom of the times, the toughs caper and cavort like The Dead End Kids, and the worst epithet they hurl at one another is `you crumb.'

Fernandez and friend confront a shop teacher who's responsible for their suspension and accidentally kill him with one of the zip-guns that seem to be the main enterprise of the school's industrial-arts program. In fear and panic, they not only raise suspicion but burn most of their bridges behind them. The movie ends unsentimentally – even harshly.

The task of directing fell to the unlikely Maxwell Shane, whose most polished credits in the noir cycle are Fear in The Night and its remake Nightmare, oneiric cheapies that created a fantasy world. Yet he does surprisingly effective work in City Across the River, putting together a plausible neighborhood of vegetable peddlers, candy shops and pool halls. Despite the dated and bowdlerized street argot, the movie stays involving and humane without retreating into cliche (Fernandez' fall isn't assigned an easy scapegoat) or crocodile tears.

I can't remember exactly when I saw "City Across the River" but it was an awfully long time ago on television. But when "Saturday Night Fever" came out with its good guy-bad guy bands of friends who were sometimes dancing and sometimes raiding other gangs and it's last scene on the bridge, I thought, "This is a remake of 'City Across the River.'" We see the main characters of "City Across the River" as high students in a Brooklyn high school taking an industrial arts class. When they get a bit rowdy, the frustrated "shop" teacher yells, "I want it quiet!" One of the students sarcastically calls out in his Brooklyn accent, "Hey! Teach wants it quiet!" Another joins in, "Yeah! Teach wants it quiet!" Within a few seconds each in the entire classroom of students is banging on his shop project with a tool while chanting, "And a one and a two and a Teach wants it quiet. And a one and a two and a Teach wants it quiet!" as they march/dance in a circle around the shop tables. The high school principal arrives, demands the identity of the two ring leaders of this riot, and suspends them. Neither is to return without a parent. The two culprits approach the shop teacher after school and try to effect a reconciliation. "Come on. Gimme a break, would ya? My faddah's in jail and my muddah's gotta woik!" "Yeah, mine too. Give us a break, would ya?" When the shop teacher says it is out of his hands, the two students pull out a zip gun to threaten him. The zip gun goes off and Teach is dead. This is just one of a collection of problems Our Gang has as they are Staying Alive in Brooklyn. And the dance party hasn't even started yet.

There was a boatload of talent in this film; but not from the leads or even supporting actors, except for the incomparable Thelma Ritter. Richard Jaekel went on to a fine career in many roles. But we find a little gem for Anthony Curtis, who is Tony Curtis, of course. He shows little of the promise of his fine later acting career. but certainly fits in Brooklyn. The film could without the corny commentary by the overblown newspaper icon. On its own merit and without voiceover, the film is good enough by itself. So stop making guns in shop, kids.