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Dead End, 1937
Tensions are rife in a New York slum, as fancy riverside apartments have just gone up literally looking down on the impoverished people living there. Drina (Sylvia Sidney) is part of a labor strike, and is fighting to keep her little brother, Tommy (Billy Halop) from getting in too deep with the local street gang. Drina also has a complicated relationship with childhood crush Dave (Joel McCrea), a man who grew up with her in the slum and is trying to make an honest living of things. Adding to the already simmering tension is the return of locally infamous bad boy and killer, Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart), on the run from the cops.
Well this was a real surprise! The cover on the streaming site made this look like kind of a cheap 30s potboiler drama. Yet the film, adapted from the stage play by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler, is a complex look at the damaging social gaps between the rich and the poor and the cycle of violence and poverty that plagues so many from even a young age.
This is honestly the type of storytelling that I associate more with modern films: several different subplots taking place at the same time, all overlapping and intersecting with each other. Between Dave, Baby Face Martin, and Tommy, ideas about what it means to be a "real man" and to have a code of honor get a real workout.
The film starkly and brutally portrays the violence and desperation of the people living in the slum. Drina is a polite, honest, sweet person, and she several times mentions what it's like being on the picket line, including watching a police officer punch one of the protesting women in the face. The street gang makes a habit of violence, their cynicism about authority making them mostly immune to any correction, aside from a baseline fear of the police and reform school.
Despite the fact that he's a murderer, and a ruthless one at that, Baby Face Martin's story is also tinged with tragedy. When he goes to see his mother, she bitterly and with a stunned, detached air, asks why he couldn't have left her alone to forget him. When he later catches up with a former flame, Francey (Claire Trevor), he finds that she has become a prostitute and is suffering from an STI. He asks why she didn't "wait for me, or starve first." She can only shrug.
Finally, the film has an interesting commentary on the way that the behaviors of the depraved are at once feared and glamorized. Baby Face Martin is, in many ways, treated as a local celebrity. When certain exploits from the slum make the newspaper, the story is filled with romantic (and false) touches. The local boys incredulously read the story, wondering aloud at all of the falsehoods and the lurid picture it paints of their neighborhood.
Significantly, the boys in the local gang are not all that sympathetic. They are rude and violent. They are whiny and sarcastic. In one sequence, they lay a trap for a wealthy boy who lives in the apartment, violently jumping him, beating him, and stealing his things. But they are victims of the aggrandizing of people like Baby Face. With little or no prospects for a successful honest life, the best they can hope for is to be the top of the heap on the street. As Drina and Dave, Sidney and McCrea walk a fine line as the two adults who understand the boys and want to protect them, and yet are frustrated by the violent path that the boys are walking down.
Complex and harrowing, I would highly recommend this one.
Dead End, 1937
Tensions are rife in a New York slum, as fancy riverside apartments have just gone up literally looking down on the impoverished people living there. Drina (Sylvia Sidney) is part of a labor strike, and is fighting to keep her little brother, Tommy (Billy Halop) from getting in too deep with the local street gang. Drina also has a complicated relationship with childhood crush Dave (Joel McCrea), a man who grew up with her in the slum and is trying to make an honest living of things. Adding to the already simmering tension is the return of locally infamous bad boy and killer, Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart), on the run from the cops.
Well this was a real surprise! The cover on the streaming site made this look like kind of a cheap 30s potboiler drama. Yet the film, adapted from the stage play by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler, is a complex look at the damaging social gaps between the rich and the poor and the cycle of violence and poverty that plagues so many from even a young age.
This is honestly the type of storytelling that I associate more with modern films: several different subplots taking place at the same time, all overlapping and intersecting with each other. Between Dave, Baby Face Martin, and Tommy, ideas about what it means to be a "real man" and to have a code of honor get a real workout.
The film starkly and brutally portrays the violence and desperation of the people living in the slum. Drina is a polite, honest, sweet person, and she several times mentions what it's like being on the picket line, including watching a police officer punch one of the protesting women in the face. The street gang makes a habit of violence, their cynicism about authority making them mostly immune to any correction, aside from a baseline fear of the police and reform school.
Despite the fact that he's a murderer, and a ruthless one at that, Baby Face Martin's story is also tinged with tragedy. When he goes to see his mother, she bitterly and with a stunned, detached air, asks why he couldn't have left her alone to forget him. When he later catches up with a former flame, Francey (Claire Trevor), he finds that she has become a prostitute and is suffering from an STI. He asks why she didn't "wait for me, or starve first." She can only shrug.
Finally, the film has an interesting commentary on the way that the behaviors of the depraved are at once feared and glamorized. Baby Face Martin is, in many ways, treated as a local celebrity. When certain exploits from the slum make the newspaper, the story is filled with romantic (and false) touches. The local boys incredulously read the story, wondering aloud at all of the falsehoods and the lurid picture it paints of their neighborhood.
Significantly, the boys in the local gang are not all that sympathetic. They are rude and violent. They are whiny and sarcastic. In one sequence, they lay a trap for a wealthy boy who lives in the apartment, violently jumping him, beating him, and stealing his things. But they are victims of the aggrandizing of people like Baby Face. With little or no prospects for a successful honest life, the best they can hope for is to be the top of the heap on the street. As Drina and Dave, Sidney and McCrea walk a fine line as the two adults who understand the boys and want to protect them, and yet are frustrated by the violent path that the boys are walking down.
Complex and harrowing, I would highly recommend this one.