City Streets (1931)

CITY STREETS              B+       
USA  (83 mi)  1931  d:  Rouben Mamoulian

This second Rouben Mamoulian film, after the box office failure but critical praise for APPLAUSE (1929), is significant in several respects, as Paramount studios forced the young director to wait a year before offering him another picture, an adaptation of a Dashiell Hammett screenplay with Gary Cooper and Clara Bow as the leads, a romantic couple that gets mixed up with bootlegger racketeers.  Clara Bow suffered a much publicized nervous breakdown and had to withdraw from the movie, much of it based on a lawsuit that Bow initiated against a former secretary named Daisy DeVoe, claiming she stole thousands of dollars worth of clothing and personal items.  While Bow won the lawsuit, the scandalous publicity cost her much more, as the secretary’s trial testimony exposed Bow’s reputation as a woman with a wild and uncontrollable love life, not to mention supposed drug use, unwanted publicity that sent her on an emotional tailspin that all but ended her career.  Since the success of It (1927), Bow was the mistress of Paramount associate producer B.P. Schulberg, where she was his vested financial interest as well, but by 1931 due to major personal problems she left Paramount, her career finished, and within another year Schulberg was squeezed out of the studio as well.  For this film, however, in an era when sex and romance determined stardom, Bow was replaced by Sylvia Sidney in only her second feature, though she was a well known star on Broadway at the time and had been directed by Mamoulian on the New York stage, where she was not only given the lead role but also became the new mistress of Schulberg as well—That’s Hollywood, folks.  During the Depression era of the 30’s, Sidney worked with many of the major lead actors, but her terrific work on this film may have cemented her reputation with gangster movies.  The commercial and critical success of von Sternberg’s Silent film Underworld (1927) is often thought of as the inspiration behind a trend of Prohibition-era Hollywood gangster films that followed, like LITTLE CAESAR (1930), PUBLIC ENEMY (1931), and SCARFACE (1932), while often overlooked is this gangster melodrama that features less onscreen violence, with supposedly ten murders, but not one of them takes place onscreen, released a month before Fritz Lang’s M (1931), containing many of the characteristics that would anticipate film noir. 

Working with cinematographer Lee Garmes, who became associated with shooting the films of von Sternberg, nominated for an Academy Award for MOROCCO (1931), winning the award for SHANGHAI EXPRESS (1933), his expressionistic influence on this film is a major factor on why it’s still important today, as it deals with noirish themes of gangland turf and criminal amorality, where the fate of the individual is challenged by a corrupt world around them, where in the laws of the jungle only the strongest survive.  Mamoulian’s direction shows a greater appreciation for the visual stylization, including elegant tracking shots, where it is arguably the most artistically advanced of the 30’s gangster films, showing momentary brilliance and occasional poetic flourish.  It’s also interesting for Gary Cooper’s portrayal of an underworld criminal, the only known example on film, while it’s also one of the earliest talking efforts, where the sound editing is often clumsy, as the camera rolls before anyone speaks, creating a time gap between characters having a dialogue that slows the pace of the film.  This is the first use of voiceover in an American film, used earlier by Hitchcock in the sound version of Blackmail (1929), as Sidney is alone onscreen with recurring thoughts in her head spoken out loud, where the audience hears the echoing voice of Gary Cooper as she recalls what he said to her earlier, where Paramount executives believed this would confuse audiences and tried to cut the scene, but the director fought for it, also the additional use of off-camera sound, which was also considered innovative at the time.  While Cooper went on to greater fame, it’s Sidney’s performance as Nan that dominates the film, literally stealing every scene she’s in, often pushed to the breaking point, becoming the face of the 30’s aptly called “Depression’s Child.” The audience is immediately intrigued by her love affair with The Kid (Cooper), a rugged guy off the ranch with a talent for shooting, appropriately enough working at a carnival shooting gallery, where their conversation is often drowned out by the massive crowd.  But when they have a romantic moment where they’re quietly alone at the beach, she tells him sees nothing wrong with working with racketeers, as at least they’re guys that make money, including her own stepfather Pop (Guy Kibbee) who works for the biggest bootlegger in town, The Big Guy (Paul Lukas).  The Kid has other ideas and wants no part of a life in crime, including his girl.  But she was born into the business, where in one of the cleverly written early scenes with Pop, he scolds her for coming in late and asks who she was with?  When she refuses to answer, despite being goaded, he bursts out laughing and rewards her with money for learning to keep her mouth shut.    

While Al Capone supposedly loved this film as an accurate portrayal of the underworld of gangsters, where they are continually undermining one another to get ahead, where hits are ordered with subtlety, where the boss’s henchmen have to read between the lines to figure out what he means, and when they knock somebody off, this makes life easier within the organization.  The Big Guy makes this clear right away, asking if Pop is interested in taking over somebody else’s territory, inferring he would like for this to happen, and then walks away while Pop gets involved in a gangland slaying, quickly giving the gun to Nan to dispose of, but she gets caught with the murder weapon and takes the prison rap.  Meanwhile Pop manipulates The Kid into joining the organization by telling him the cops planted the gun on Nan, and they’ll need his help to try to get her out of jail.  Despite promises that the mob will get her out, Nan languishes in jail for two long years, becoming embittered by her experience, where her tough girl persona is convincing, becoming cynical about the whole racketeering operation from behind bars.  This prison sequence shows Sidney at her best, given a hard edge, as she’s wise to the ways of the world and can stand up to anybody.  When she gets out, she’s literally dumfounded to find The Kid working with these same bootleggers, blinded to their real intentions, where The Big Guy throws her a party in her honor, where he uses the occasion to make Nan his girl.  When The Kid stands up to him, “Nobody steals my girl, not even you,” which seems to click a switch in his head where all bets are off and anything can happen, leading to a spectacular fight to the finish, culminating with an exhilarating chase scene up a narrow mountain road that is as thrilling today as when it was made.  Paul Lukas is an interesting contrast to the humble Western manner of Gary Cooper, as he plays the suave and sophisticated Charles Boyer-style villain, well dressed and heavily Hungarian-accented, where it’s easy for the audience to root against such a villainous guy.  Many of these little quirks make this an offbeat gangster film, where Mamoulian uses a staggering array of innovative camera shots and narrative techniques for this film, including an infamous sequence shot from the top of the stairs where The Kid is steadfast in going after The Big Guy and refuses to listen to Nan, despite being draped all over him, where she’s left alone in tears muttering “You fool” over and over again, yet the camera holds the scene in utter silence as she composes herself and paces the floor until an idea comes to her, and she slowly walks across the floor to make a telephone call, where Sidney offers her own praise for the director, “Look, he carried me through that picture.  He was a great teacher and a great director, and I will always be indebted to him for his genius and for his confidence in me.”  In one of her earliest screen appearances, Paulette Goddard can be seen as a nightclub patron, but in perhaps the most bewildering twist of all, once the outcome has been determined, the rising trumpets and blaring horns from Prelude to Act I of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger Herbert v. Karajan "Prelude to Act I " Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg YouTube (9:49) resound triumphantly over the end credits in one of the more astonishing audience send-offs on record—an enduring classic that will likely leave the audience smiling.   

The Glass Key (1935)

THE GLASS KEY             C+            

USA  (80 mi)  1935  d:  Frank Tuttle

Not to be confused with the later version of this film, which was remade in 1942 with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd (as the wrong film was shipped to the theater), this is basically the same story, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, but this rarer, earlier version omits the love interest, which was expanded to make room for a more noirish version, complete with Lake as a femme fatale.  George Raft grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in New York and hung out with professional gangsters, such as Owney Madden and Arnold Rothstein, learning to imitate their mannerisms before breaking into films, initially as a dancer during the Vaudeville era before landing a part in the gangster classic SCARFACE (1932), playing a coin-flipping gunman.  No one wore hats better, or wore better hats, than George Raft.  He was given the lead in this picture, though he plays Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character who likes to spend his evenings drinking rye whiskey and winning money at rigged roulette wheels, whose relationship to political boss Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold) is never made clear, though he appears to be his protection, the muscle, the right hand man who is always at the boss’s side, showing little distinction between politics and the portrayal of mob bosses.  Raft was actually the first consideration as Sam Spade in THE MALTESE FALCON (1941), but he turned it down, opening the doors to a man named Bogart.  Set during or just after the Prohibition Era, when saloons appear to be nothing more than all-male speakeasy’s, Madvig tries to clean up the city and shuts down some illicit gambling joints, where the owner, Shad O’Rory (Robert Gleckler), along with his muscle, Jeff (Guinn “Big Boy” Williams), don’t take kindly to the action and swear to get even.  This sets the wheels in motion for a blood feud.

Adding to the mystery is Madvig’s support of Senator John T. Henry (Charles Richman), whose daughter Janet (Claire Dodd) he’d like to marry (the role expanded for Veronica Lake), and whose son, Taylor Henry (Ray Milland), is something of a family embarrassment, as he owes plenty of money to loan sharks like O’Rory, putting his father in a precarious predicament.  When Madvig’s daughter Opal (Rosalind Keith) expresses a romantic interest in Taylor, who happens to be standing in the way of Madvig’s desires for Janet, Madvig in a rage decides to set matters straight.  When Taylor Henry ends up dead, Madvig is immediately implicated, as he was the last one seen with Taylor in an angry public dispute on the street.  With the election coming up, the newspapers have a field day at Madvig’s expense, where much of the story is advanced through developing headlines, with O’Rory continuing to feed the paper anonymous tips.  Only when it appears the tide has turned against Madvig, who has been publicly convicted by the press, does Beaumont spring into action masterminding a crafty, behind-the-scenes operation to uncover what evidence O’Rory actually has, which isn’t much except a witness to the arguing.  But that’s plenty with just a few days before the election.  O’Rory, however, is not satisfied, and when he can’t pay off Beaumont to rat on his friend, he sicks his dog and his muscle on him, repeatedly beating him to a pulp, trying to manufacture a witness to the murder.  When he somehow manages to slip away and is treated in the hospital, Ann Sheridan shows some sass with some terrific lines as his nurse.  After rounding up all the available suspects and witnesses having any knowledge in the murder, it all comes together in an Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot style interrogation with Beaumont inventively taking the lead. 

This particular version has little inventiveness or star power, but Raft is convincing as a guy who would feel right at home in Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS (1990), while major elements of this film can be detected in the Coen Brothers highly stylized gangster flick MILLERS CROSSING (1990), also set in the Prohibition era, where one guy lays it all on the line, switching loyalties to the other side, attempting to bring peace to a long standing blood feud between warring gangs, also sounding like the blueprint to Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (1961).