Side Street 1950

This is a taunt little B noir thriller directed by Anthony Mann that reunited Farley Granger and Cathy O’ Donnell who appeared as the doomed lovers in Nicholas Ray’s “They Live by Night” the year before. This time we find the couple newly married with a baby on the way living in her parent’s small dingy Manhattan apartment and having trouble making ends meet. Granger is a good guy, works hard at a temporary job he has as a mail man but does a stupid thing.  One day as he’s dropping off the mail at the office of  a shyster lawyer and blackmailer played by Edmond Ryan, he sees some high end bills lying around and decides to go back when the office is empty and rob them of the loot. Rayan along with his partner James Craig ( a ham hock of an actor) run a shake down  racket of milking rich men of their money after they’re set up to fall into the clutches of Lucille 'Lucky' Colner. Lucille turns out to be not that lucky and is played with rancid relish by that nourish B dame of dames Adele Jergens. Lucky Lucy and her pals push some tangy and damaging photos of her and the unlucky johns on them in order to get a lot of moola out of them, and if they don’t pay up they better watch out.. So stupid Farley now has a lot of money but he also has a conscience and decides to return the money to the crooks, but this isn’t as easy as it sounds, and so the chase as they say is on all over Manhattan. Mann who worked in many genres does a great job with this shoe string B shooting most of the film on location in New York City. M.G.M was not known for Noir, but in the late 40’s and early 50’s they did a small series of  B Noirs  and being M.G.M. the films have the gloss and production values of their A movies. The beautiful cinematography is by the great Joseph Ruttenberg whose remarkable career began in 1917 and who went right on doing films up to 1968. Part of the pleasure of watching this movie are the glimpses we get of a city that no longer exists including the Third Ave El and a peek at 8^th street in the Village where the marvelous Jean Hagen comes on as a cheap nightclub singer (she’s dubbed) whose relationship with her sometime lover Craig comes to no good. Also in the cast is a boatload of good character actors including Paul Kelly (who in real life found himself in a boatload of trouble), Paul Harvey, Charles McGraw, Harry Bellaver, Whit Bissell, a very young Ben Cooper, the delightful Mineva Urecal and in a bit the real life Marie Crisis who owned and operated the famous cabaret Marie Crisis’s in the Village. Mann ends the film with a great car chase through the concrete canyons of lower Manhattan, and hopefully after it’s over you’ll sit back and say to yourself this was a damn good little movie. Thank you Mr. Mann.