One series, eleven movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVD, Max, TCM, YouTube.]

Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV (dir. Mary Robertson and Emma Schwartz, 2024). A documentary series, five episodes, about the world of Nickelodeon in the 1990s and early 2000s. The central figure in this toxic environment is Dan Schenider, a celebrated showrunner whose bullying, sense of entitlement, and contempt for women in the workplace seem to have been unbounded (an anonymous costumer calls him a case of arrested development). But there’s more: TV skits with astonishingly crude sexual innuendo, and pedophiles on the set. Watching this documentary makes me happy that our kids lived their childhoods without cable: they watched PBS and videotapes, and for a long time we paid them not to watch TV at all. ★★★★ (M)

*

Railroaded! (dir. Anthony Mann, 1947). “Don’t give me that love stuff”: one of the more sordid noirs of my acquaintance: alcoholism, domestic violence, point-blank killings with a “belly gun,” a body weighted and thrown in a river, a criminal partner left for dead in a laundry truck, and cops who seek to pin a murder on a most unlikely suspect. Good performances from John Ireland as a thug and Jane Randolph as his desperate girlfriend. And Hugh Beaumont does a convincing job as a police detective and the hero of the piece. Anthony Mann and our favorite household’s favorite year in movies come through again. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Black Tuesday (dir. Hugo Fregonese, 1954). A bold escape from Death Row (where executions are scheduled for Tuesdays) gives criminal boss Vincent Canelli (Edward G. Robinson), bank robber Peter Manning (Peter Graves), and assorted others a chance to live. They take along hostages, who may have already lost their chance: a guard, a doctor, a reporter, another guard’s daughter, a priest (Milburn Stone of Gunsmoke ). It’s a brutal movie, with Robinson offering an even darker version of his murderous Johnny Rocco (Key Largo). Cinematography by Stanley Cortez, in super-stark black and white. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Conspiracy (dir. Lew Landers, 1939). Intrigue, on ship and on land, in an unnamed European fascist state, with an American radio officer (Allan Lane) on the run from the police and from the resistance (who fear that “the boy,” as they call him, will endanger their efforts). But one member of the resistance (Linda Hayes) is determined to help him. An inventive bit: all the signage in this country is in Esperanto. An odd point: this low-budget effort prefigures Casablanca in a number of ways — but no spoilers. ★★ (TCM)

*

Baby God (dir. Hannah Olson, 2020). A documentary about the career and offspring of Quincy Fortier, a Las Vegas doctor (and Nevada’s 1991 Doctor of the Year) who used his own semen in the work of his fertility clinic, fathering an unknown number of children over four decades. Women he impregnated and their children speak to the camera, trying to think through a baffling narrative of betrayal — and there are even darker stories from the doctor’s own family life. Fortier, who died at the age of ninety-four in 2006, remains an enigma (“I’m just helpin’ out,” he told his son). Two flaws: the pace is slow, and there’s little context about the practice of insemination fraud, aside from a statement in the closing credits that Fortier is hardly a lone case. ★★★ (M)

*

Desperate Journey (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1942). An RAF plane is shot over Germany, and its surviving crew members must make their way to Holland, but not before doing all kinds of damage to the enemy war effort, even as a Nazi officer (Raymond Massey) hunts them down. Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan lead the RAF men, with Alan Hale providing endless comic relief, and therein lies the problem: the movie is an awkward mix of serious suspense and high jinks. Nazis, slapstick, wisecracks, a doubletalk routine: I’m reminded of All Through the Night, but that movie takes place in the safety of New York City, not in enemy territory, where the RAF men at times resemble the Bowery Boys, ready to pull off Routine Nine or some such on the enemy. Best elements: Flynn, Nancy Coleman, the fake parents, the Casablanca-like (and Conspiracy-like) speech about duty, Bert Glennon’s cinematography, Max Steiner’s music, and travel by map. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The Spiral Staircase (dir. Robert SIodmak, 1946). If I had to choose one movie to illustrate the idea of Gothic noir, it’d be this one. In a turn-of-the-century New England town, someone is killing women with disabilities, and a mute maid (Dorothy McGuire) to a wealthy family in a big old house (Ethel Barrymore, George Brent, and others) is in danger. The movie does a fine job is casting suspicion on a range of characters. But the most striking thing here is Nicholas Musaraca’s cinematography: darkness galore, scenes shot from great heights, perspectives that suggest a killer tracking a victim, and long stretches that turn into silent film — and the movie begins with an audience watching one. ★★★★ (YT)

*

A Patch of Blue (dir. Guy Green, 1965). Blind since childhood, Selina D’Arcey (Elizabeth Hartman) lives in a dump of an apartment with her grandfather Ole Pa (Wallace Ford), whom she calls a bastard, and her mother Rose-Anne (Shelley Winters), whom she calls a whore — and that’s literal. Uneducated, battered by her mother, Selina finds a world apart when she sits in a park and a young urban professional, Gordon Ralfe (Sidney Poitier), removes a caterpillar that has fallen down the back of her blouse. A frank, tender story about desire, deprivation, and different forms of love, though the dialogue in the D’Arcey apartment (screenplay by the director) is sometimes hopelessly stagey, and the Gordon’s cheerful selflessness (the supermarket games) is a bit much. Bonus: a beautiful score (harmonica, harp, marimba, piano, strings, vibraphone) by Jerry Goldsmith. ★★★ (TCM)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s 1950: Peak Noir feature

Born to Be Bad (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950).Christabel (Joan Fontaine), the niece of a prominent publisher, comes to live with her uncle’s assistant Donna Foster (Joan Leslie) while attending business school, and soon begins a careful campaign to destroy Donna’s relationship with ultra-rich fiancé Curtis Carey’s (Zachary Scott) while starting up her own relationship with writer Nick Bradley (Robert Ryan). Christabel wants Nick but wants to marry Curtis, and as Donna says, “Christabel will take care of Christabel — every time.” In 1950 the movie may have looked like cheap melodrama, but it now looks like an exploration of the dark triad. Darker than All About Eve, released later than year, but not as dark as the 1944 Guest in the House. ★★★★

The Damned Don’t Cry (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1950). “I want something more than what I’ve had out of life, and I’m gonna get it”: Joan Crawford rises from life as impoverished Ethel Whitehead to become the glamorous, pseudonymous Lorna Harrison Forbes, relying on and betraying men — a meek accountant (Kent Smith), an aesthete-crime boss (David Brian), a tough underboss (Steve Cochran) — as the circumstances demand. Like Christabel, Ethel is out for herself, always. A posh noir, with a snappy screenplay by Harold Medford and Jerome Weidman, from a story by Gertrude Walker, with contributions of some sort by Crawford. My favorite line: “What kind of self-respect is there in living on aspirin tablets and chicken salad sandwiches?” ★★★★

Night and the City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1950). “I just wanna be somebody,” says Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), a minor American in a post-war British underworld who devises a scheme to control all-in wrestling in London. What makes this noir particularly compelling is character: Harry, running like a rat in a maze as he tries to manage the art of the deal; saintly Mary (Gene Tierney), whose happier days with Harry are summed up in a photograph of the two in a canoe; Philip Nosseross (Francis L. Sullivan), a nightclub owner whose “bought and paid for” wife Helen (Googie Withers) finds him repulsive and has saved up to make a life apart; Figler (James Hayter), a figure out of Dickens who manages a group of sham beggars; Gregorius Kristo (Stanislaus Zbyszko), an aging Greco-Roman wrestler who finds all-in wrestling repulsive; and on, and on. Max Greene’s (Mutz Greenbaum) cinematography places them all in a world of shadows — before the story ends in early morning light. My favorite moments: Harry trying to get a refund, the ink smearing. ★★★★

[“Remember them, Harry? Nice people. Nice people to know and be with.”]

Where the Sidewalk Ends (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). A Laura reunion: Preminger, Dana Andrews, and Gene Tierney, with Andrews as Mark Dixon, a rogue cop with a dark secret, and Tierney as Morgan Taylor, a model and the daughter of a cabdriver (Tom Tully) wrongfully accused of murder. Atmosphere is everything here: the dingy Pike Street apartment, with the Manhattan Bridge in the distance, the dingy police station, Martha’s Café, the parking garage, Dixon’s hotel apartment, and the constant strains of Cyril Mockridge’s variations on Alfred Newman’s “Street Scene.” My favorite moments: Mrs. Tribaum (Grace Mills) seen through her basement window, so spooky, so city. ★★★★

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, TCM, YouTube.]

The Deep Blue Sea (dir. Terence Davies, 2011). From the Terence Rattigan play, the story of a passionate woman (Rachel Weisz) caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, or two unsatisfactory alternatives: her marriage to a devoted, older, unexciting judge (Simon Russell Beale) or an affair with a reckless former RAF pilot who seems incapable of love (Tom Hiddleston). Strong overtones of Anna Karenina, which I trust are intended. In Davies fashion, the story arrives in pieces, one reality dissolving into another. The best moment belongs to Mrs. Elton, the landlady (Ann Mitchell), who speaks of what real love is: “It’s wiping someone’s ass or changing the sheets when they’ve wet themselves, and letting ’em keep their dignity so you can both go on.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949). I’ve written about this movie in several posts. It’s a perfect short noir. What I especially noticed this time: everyman Joe Norson (Farley Granger), having acted impulsively, madly, becomes something of a child in need of soothing care, even as his wife (Cathy O’Donnell) has just given birth to their son. Jean Hagen and Paul Kelly steal the movie: she, as an alcoholic singer; he, as a police captain flipping intercom switches and snapping orders. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Scarlet Hour (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1956). A noirish melodrama with overtones of Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard. The main ingredients of the somewhat wobbly plot: an increasingly risky affair between a real-estate developer’s wife (Carol Ohmart) and his top salesman (Tom Tryon), a furtive tryst on a country road, a heist scheme overheard, and a heist gone wrong. As the developer, James Gregory is alternately brutal and conciliatory; as the developer’s wife, Carol Ohmart suggests Phyllis Dietrichson’s icy calculation and Norma Desmond’s desperation. It’s fun to see Edward Binns, Nat “King” Cole, David Lewis (an exec in The Apartment), E.G. Marshall, Elaine Stritch (who hated the movie), and “Tom” Tryon, whom I know as Thomas Tryon, as I wrote a book report on his novel The Other in tenth grade. ★★★ (YT)

*

So Ends Our Night (dir. John Cromwell, 1941). “This is a story of the people without passports”: Fredric March, Glenn Ford, and Margaret Sullavan as three German refugees, the first a political dissident, the other two Jewish, now moving from country to country, always in danger of discovery and deportation because they lack the necessary documents. It’s especially painful to see Ford’s and Sullavan’s characters dream of a life in the United States when we know how the odds would have been stacked against that. The movie’s one weakness might be its ultra-episodic organization, but the director is telling a big story, and the constant shifts in scene and tone reflect the unpredictability of life without a home: things happen. Ford and Sullavan are especially good here, and Leonid Kinskey and Erich von Stroheim add comedy and menace to the proceedings. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s novel The Passenger would make a great complement to this movie.]

*

Cage of Evil (dir. Edward L. Cahn, 1960). Eddie Mueller apologized for this one. It is pretty bad, but, alas, not bad enough to be good — just stupid. Scott Harper (Ronald Foster), a cop improbably headed for a promotion, and Holly Taylor (Pat Blair), a crook’s girl, get together in an improbable scheme to make off with some uncut diamonds. With a dopey voiceover by John Maxwell as Foster’s superior, a brief appearance by Robert Shayne (Inspector Henderson from Adventures of Superman), and one awkwardly funny moment when Scott is surprised to meet up with his fellow cops as he’s about to sell the diamonds. ★ (TCM)

*

The Iron Curtain (dir. William Wellman, 1948). A story of espionage and renunciation, from the memoirs of Igor Gouzenko, told in semi-documentary style with a voiceover by Reed Hadley. Dana Andrews is Gouzenko, a code expert working at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa; Gene Tierney is his wife Anna. When Igor (with help from Anna) begins to recognize the shared humanity of his Canadian neighbors, he makes a decision that puts him and his relatives back home in danger. With music from Russian composers and stylish shadows from cinematographer Charles G.Clarke. ★★★★ (YT)

*

My Cousin Rachel (dir. Henry Koster, 1952). From a novel by Daphne Du Maurier: gothic noir, with cliffs, a great house by the sea, overtones of Hamlet (and Rebecca), and ambiguities that never resolve. Olivia de Haviland is Rachel Ashley, widow of Ambrose Ashley (John Sutton), the beloved guardian and cousin of Philip Ashley (Richard Burton). Philip suspects Rachel of killing Ambrose in Italy, but finds himself falling in love with her when she comes to visit the great house in England. De Haviland and Burton are superb: a cool cipher and a younger man utterly besotted. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Chicago Confidential (dir. Sidney Salkow, 1957) I chose it after seeing that the first scene was shot on location. But that was false advertising; all other locations are on sets. The movie tells a story of racketeers taking over a union (the Workers National Brotherhood, which seems like a thinly disguised version of the Teamsters) and using any means necessary to establish their authority. Four pluses: a nerdy demonstration of voice analysis via oscilloscope, an impressionist’s nightclub act, a spirited performance from Beverly Garland (Barbara Harper Douglas on My Three Sons), and a moment straight from The 39 Steps, which I am happy to have predicted. ★★ (YT)

*

Take My Life (dir. Ronald Neame, 1947). From the magical year 1947, a Hitchcockian story of a man wrongly accused of murder (Hugh Williams) and his wife’s (Greta Gynt) effort to establish his innocence. The musical backdrop — she’s an opera singer, he’s her manager — matters little, save for one melody, found on a sheet of music paper in a suitcase. The movie drags in the middle but quickens considerably when the story moves from London to Scotland. The near-duplication of a scene from Shadow of a Doubt is astonishing in its shamelessness. ★★★ (IA)

*

Exposed (dir. George Blair, 1947). A Republic Picture, with Adele Mara as private detective B. Prentice. A dumb effort with some snappy patter. “He’s a bad egg, honey.” “Don’t worry — I’ll scramble him.” ★★ (YT)

*

Moss Rose (dir. Gregory Ratoff, 1947). Victorian noir: Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy) as a chorus girl in Victorian England who finds her friend and fellow dancer dead, with a Bible and a moss rose on her night table. But whodunit? With Victor Mature as a suave foreign-looking gentleman, Patricia Medina as his jealous fiancée, and Ethel Barrymore as his mother. And Vincent Price as a Scotland Yard inspector with extensive knowledge of flowers. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Baron of Arizona (dir. Samuel Fuller, 1950). Based on the true story of James Reavis, who laid fraudulent claim to the territory of Arizona. Vincent Price is Reavis, an arrogant, slick fabulator, and any resemblance to any present-day fabulator is pure coincidence. With Beulah Bondi, Ellen Drew, and Reed Hadley as a narrator and character. Exciting to see a movie in which ink is a crucial plot element. ★★★ (CC)

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A Side Street police station

[Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949). Click any image for a larger view.]

Captain Walter Anderson (Paul Kelly) has it all: coat rack, bulletin board, schoolhouse light-fixture, desk lamp, fancy telelectric-radiophonic communications equipment, and oh! those cabinets and drawers.

Other films, other police stations
L.A. Confidential : Niagara : East Side, West Side

Side Street in a Naked City

When I first saw Anthony Mann’s film Side Street (1949), I hadn’t yet seen the television series Naked City. Seeing Side Street again, I’m excited to realize that its last shot must be the inspiration for the last shot of the last Naked City episode, “Barefoot on a Bed of Coals” (1963). The view in each shot is from inside an ambulance, with a woman standing and watching as her wounded man is taken to a hospital. Here, from Side Street, is Ellen Norson (Cathy O’Donnell), watching as the ambulance drives off with her husband Joe (Farley Granger). Click on any image for a larger view:



And here is the much longer closing shot from “Barefoot on a Bed of Coals.” It’s very difficult to see the resemblance as a coincidence.

The resemblance may be a matter of Naked City ’s director of photography Andrew Laszlo paying tribute to Side Street ’s cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg. Or the resemblance may be meant as a larger tribute to a film shot on location in Manhattan, a film whose style influenced the series.¹ Or perhaps Harry Bellaver (Naked City ’s Detective Frank Arcaro), who played a cabdriver in Side Street, remembered the closing shot and made a suggestion. Who knows? Not I.


[Harry Bellaver as cabdriver Larry Giff.]

Side Street and the first Granger-O’Donnell film, They Live by Night, are available as a two-fer DVD.

¹ Though Naked City takes its name from Jules Dassin’s film The Naked City (1948), the series plays more like Side Street: the emphasis is not on the cops but on guest-star protagonists. And speaking of cops, Naked City ’s Lieutenant Mike Parker (Horace McMahon) bears a greater resemblance to Side Street ’s terse Captain Walter Anderson (Paul Kelly) than to The Naked City ’s elfin Detective Lieutenant Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald).

Related reading
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Side Street, locations
They Live by Night

They Live by Night

[Sandwiches and sodas. Click any image for a larger view.]


[On the road, again.]

They Live by Night (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1948) seems ahead of its time. The film’s brief prologue tells us that the young couple at the center of the story, Bowie Bowers (Farley Granger) and Keechie Mobley (Cathy O’Donnell), “were never properly introduced to the world we live in.” They are in flight: he, as an escaped convict; she, as a daughter, niece, gas-station attendant, and maid of all work who runs from her family of thieves. The premise might suggest High Sierra (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1949), but Bowie is no criminal: he was wrongly convicted after falling in with bad company. As Keechie tells it, “He’s just a kid.” It seems that neither she nor he has ever danced or kissed. They are absolute beginners. All they know is their mutual devotion.

They Live by Night has been repackaged for DVD as film noir, but I’m not sure the description fits: there are too many moments of comedy (Ian Wolfe as the proprietor of an all-night marriage chapel, Byron Foulger as a manager of rental cabins), too many scenes of domestic happiness. But happiness for Bowie and Keechie is always fleeting: just as a cop in the film predicts, every knock on the door sets their hearts pounding. Thus they are again and again on the move, by day, by night, one or the other driving. And then there are Howard Da Silva and Jay C. Flippen as Chickamaw and T-Dub Mobley, Keechie’s brutal uncles, determined to make Bowie the third man in their criminal schemes. (It takes, T-Dub explains, three men to knock over a bank, “the three mosquitoes.”) Perhaps it’s noir after all. But I prefer to think of the film as the prelude to Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955): the real story here is one of young lovers attempting to flee the world. Leigh Harline’s score — made largely of variations on “I Know Where I’m Going” — underscores the pathos of their journey.

For me the great revelation of this film is Cathy O’Donnell. She has always seemed to me the one false note in The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946): as girl-next-door Wilma Cameron, she speaks with a stagey voice that seems wildly out of place — courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn, who arranged for diction lessons to remove O’Donnell’s southern accent. Here O’Donnell is a far more natural actor, and the difference is extraordinary. No wonder Granger recommended her for the film. The two have a genuine, sweetly erotic chemistry on screen. Granger and O’Donnell co-starred again in Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949), but there O’Donnell has relatively little to do. My guess is that They Live by Night is her shining moment in film.

They Live by Night is adapted from Edward Anderson’s novel Thieves Like Us (1937). A copy sits somewhere in our house, in the stacks of books waiting for shelves not yet built.


[In a bus depot. Keechie skips the nickel candy bars and chooses the cheapest option, “Delicious Fresh Nuts,” 1¢. I like vending machines with mirrors, artifacts of the dowdy world. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.]

A related post
Will Lee (Mr. Hooper) in They Live by Night

Goodbye, Naked City

[Zohra Lampert says goodbye. From the final moments of the Naked City episode “Barefoot on a Bed of Coals,” May 29, 1963. Click any image for a larger view.]

It would be nice to know whether the makers of Naked City knew that this episode was to be the show’s last. End of the season or end of the series — either way, the long goodbye is fitting.

“Barefoot on a Bed of Coals” is a strange episode with a baffling start. The episode looks at the life of Stanley Walenty (Steven Hill), a police wannabe who patrols his pretend beat wearing a real uniform and carrying a real gun. His downstairs neighbor Clara Espuella (Zohra Lampert) knows none of that. All she knows is that she’s smitten with Stanley. In the episode’s long final shot, Clara says goodbye to him as he’s taken to the hospital with a wound from a real criminal’s gun.

The final scene plays out on East Fourth Street, between the Bowery and Second Avenue. It’s an appropriate location for an episode focused on make-believe: this block of East Fourth was and is a world of theater. Notice the Writers’ Stage and East End Theatre on the right. Today, the block is home to La MaMa (nos. 66 and 74A), Duo Multicultural Arts Center (no. 62), and the New York Theatre Workshop (no. 79).

There are now fifty-three Naked City posts in the Orange Crate Art archives. Naked City is one the great television series, and it’s all on DVD.

[You might recognize Zohra Lampert as Angelina from Splendor in the Grass (dir. Elia Kazan, 1961).]

*

June 3, 2015: The closing shot of the film Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949) might have inspired this episode’s ending. See what you think.

Telephone exchange names on screen: GLadstone

Railroaded! (dir. Anthony Mann, 1947) is a perfect B-movie: nasty, brutish, and short. The cast includes Hugh Beaumont (later of Leave It to Beaver), John Ireland (Red River), and Jane Randolph (Cat People). GLadstone was indeed a Los Angeles telephone exchange. And Anthony Mann made some modestly terrific thrillers.


[Click for a larger view.]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : This Gun for Hire

“[A]rt’s about limits”

Film critic Richard Schickel, in a DVD-release commentary on Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1955):

If I may just say so, I am so irritated with young people who proudly claim never to have seen a black-and-white movie. They don’t understand: art’s about limits. It’s not about limitlessness.

Telephone exchange names on screen: Side Street

[The Moving Finger looks up an address; and, having looked up an address, moves on.]

I sat down to watch Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949) expecting a so-so thriller and was surprised to discover a great film. The premise is deeply noir: an everyday Joe (literally: letter-carrier Joe Norson, played by Farley Granger) makes a mistake and finds himself in way over his head. The film has strong overtones of The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948): aerial views of New York City; a street-level montage of city life; a Tiresias-like narrator meditating on the lives of city dwellers and Joe’s plight; a blackmail racket; brief moments of brutal, intimate violence; a chase through lower Manhattan. There are fine performances by Granger (bruised and sweaty), Harry Bellaver (a cab-driving thug), Whit Bissell (a skinny bank-teller with a fluffy dog), Jean Hagen (an alcoholic nightclub singer), and Paul Kelly (the police-captain narrator, in a performance that is a model of economy and understatement). It was Cathy O’Donnell’s name that made me curious about this film: O’Donnell’s stagey performance as Wilma Cameron (the girl next door) in The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946) has long seemed to me to be the one false note in that film. As Ellen Norson, Joe’s wife, O’Donnell has little to do here, and her New York accent fades in and out. Her finest moment — no spoilers here — comes when she has almost disappeared from the film. It’s entirely unexpected.

The real stars of Side Street are its New York streetscapes and the cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg. Ruttenberg is said to have disliked fellow cinematographer Gregg Toland's deep-focus effect, but many of the shots in Side Street are strongly evocative of Toland’s work in Citizen Kane: unusual angles, oddly-placed objects, strong contrasts of light and dark. This shot of Farley Granger is my favorite:



The film’s final chase is a marvel of camerawork, alternating between aerial views (tiny cars moving through impossibly narrow streets) and the interior of a cab. One moment you’re watching from on high; the next, you too have a gun at the back of your neck. Thank goodness the narrator steps in one last time to tell us what to make of it all.

Side Street is available on DVD with They Live by Night (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949), also starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. (Good, but it’s no Side Street.)

[29 W. Eighth Street, the address of the Village Beauty Salon, is now home to Smoke Express and Cafe Underground. Upstairs is L’impasse, selling what one guide to the area calls “quality slutwear.” It’s a pity that the telephone listings in Side Street have only a “BUtterfield 4”: Joseph Ruttenberg was to work on BUtterfield 8 (dir. Daniel Mann, 1960) a decade later. “The Moving Finger” comes from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated by Edward FitzGerald: “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on.”]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy