SIDE STREET: Blu-ray (MGM, 1949) Warner Archive

What eventually was coined as ‘film noir’ in Hollywood by the French, ostensibly began its cycle in 1941, but effectively to have run its course by the end of the decade, thanks to an ever-increasing bent by Tinsel Town to lean into more color productions, with splashier production values and bigger casts. The small, darkly purposed, and even more darkly lit ‘little’ drama/thriller was fading fast in the rearview by the time director, Anthony Mann delivered Side Street (1949) to its canon. Had Side Street been made at any other studio but MGM, it might have had something of an afterlife. Alas, the precepts of noir tended to clash with MGM’s superficial sheen for all things audaciously glamorous. But perhaps the only real problem with Side Street is that it had the misfortune to debut in the same year that L.B. Mayer’s once profitable empire was already badly lagging behind its competitors for a piece of the ever-shrinking market share in ticket sales. The top-heavy producer-driven/star system machinery that had made MGM such a powerhouse during the war years had suddenly become its greatest deficit. Two years earlier, at war’s end, Metro recorded its first ever year-end financial loss, a looming precursor of the decade-long struggles to beleaguer the studio, especially with the government’s ‘consent decree’ pressing hard on all of the Hollywood majors to divest themselves of their theater chains in order to create a ‘fairer’ market for independents to thrive.

Side Street is likely the sort of picture MGM’s newly anointed production head, Dore Schary would have liked; shot modestly on location, with a gritty tale to tell, and decidedly a lack of star-power to anchor audiences’ expectations as to what they were going to see. Schary preferred what came to be known around the backlot as ‘message pictures’, loosely translated as ‘morality tales’ or pictures that teach as well as entertain. In the same year as Side Street, Schary debuted Battleground, an unrelentingly bleak depiction of the horrors of WWII largely sanitized until then in popular film. Yet, even afforded the benefit of these backstage shifts in power and tastes, Side Street is an odd duck. It’s on location mise en scène, hard-hitting screenplay by Sydney Boehm, and Mann’s unrelenting direction conspire to achieve a visually arresting, ethical literalness, elevating the priestly claustrophobia afflicting star, Farley Granger's financially-ailing alter ego, Joe Norson.

We first meet Joe, who resides in a squalid little apartment in New York with his ever-devoted wife, Ellen (Cathy O’Donnell, with whom Granger had appeared a year earlier in the critically acclaimed, They Live By Night) and her parents (Harry Antrim and Esther Sommers). Having lost his full-time gig as a gas station attendant, Joe has since found part-time employ as a mail carrier. As Ellen is with child, the usually high-minded Joe instead justifies stealing what he believes is a relatively modest $200 from a lawyer's office while on his route. Alas, he later learns he has made off with $30,000 belonging to one, Victor Backett (Edmon Ryan), a very corrupt attorney with connections to the city’s underworld crime syndicate. Backett’s latest patsy is broker, Emil Lorrison (Paul Harvey) whom he has framed in a seedy sex scandal with the assist of his gal Friday, Lucille ‘Lucky’ Colner (Adele Jergens) and another accomplice, Georgie Garsell (James Craig).

A basically honest fellow, Joe sweats out his new-gotten gains. He lies to Ellen, the money derives from a new ‘out of town’ legitimate gig, camouflaging the cash as a package he later asks local barkeep, Nick Drumman (Edwin Max), whom he thoroughly trusts, to hide for him. In the meantime, Lucille's strangled corpse is fished out of the East River. Acting on information gleaned from Lucille’s ‘love diary’, police captain Walter Anderson (Paul Kelly) puts both Lorrison and Backett under a microscope. Meanwhile, Ellen gives birth to a son. Newly reformed, Joe elects to give back the money. Only Backett isn’t buying, suspecting Joe is up to blackmail. Instead, he sends Garsell to kidnap Joe and steal back the cash. Joe manages his narrow escape, only to discover Nick has met a similar fate to Lucille and the money he left with him is gone. Joe confides in Ellen, who encourages him to confess what he knows to the police. Only they now suspect Joe of Nick’s murder.

Joe manages to track down Garsell's gal/pal, nightclub singer, Harriet Sinton (Jean Hagen), but she betrays him to Garsell. The ruthless Garsell plots to kill both Joe and Harriet to cover his tracks.  By now, Captain Anderson is closing in on his man (or rather, ‘men’) and a harrowing chase ensues through the vacant side streets. Garsell’s accomplice, Larry Giff (Harry Bellaver) tries to turn himself in, but is murdered by Garsell, who forces Joe at gun point to drive Giff’s getaway taxi.  Dogged by his unbearable guilt, Joe deliberately crashes the taxi, forcing Garsell to escape the wreck on foot. Promptly, he is gunned down by Anderson’s boys in blue. Ellen arrives on the scene, discovering Joe seriously, though not fatally wounded. The couple embrace, just before Joe is taken away in a police-escorted ambulance.

As with a good many films not immediately popular, though since to have gone on to develop something of a cult following, Side Street lost $467,000 upon its initial release. Critics were mostly kind. But audiences stayed away. Viewed today, Side Street is hardly a stellar example of the ‘noir’ thriller. Whole portions of its modest 83-minute run time are devoted to the inner turmoil of a man who desperately needs money, but cannot bring himself to morally bankrupt his soul to get it. Cathy O’Donnell’s mousy mum has a rather deadening effect on this tale. Director, Mann delivers on the climactic chase as well as the police procedural sequences that involve Anderson slowly piecing together the clues, momentarily to lead him on a breadcrumb trail of misdirection.

However, in the end, Side Street owes more to the melodrama than the crime thriller, and this, proves its undoing. Farley Granger’s star was on the ascendence in 1949. It would crest in 1951 with his appearance in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, but then, steadily thereafter to fade into obscurity. Granger’s Joe is an honest guy embittered by circumstance. Granger was particularly adept at portraying these kinds of ‘boys’ who desperately want to act like full-grown men but do not yet quite grasp the level of maturity in their social outlook or decisive actions. There is a lesson to be gleaned here. Don’t play with the big boys or you’ll get trampled. Granger’s Joe narrowly escapes death. But will he also avoid incarceration? The ending to Side Street is ambiguous. For although Joe is innocent of the crime of murder, he is a thief in the eyes of the law.

Side Street arrives on Blu-ray via the Warner Archive (WAC). Predictably, this is a class ‘A’ effort, given the sort of attention and ground-up restoration efforts, cribbing from source materials that have been properly curated over time. If nothing else, MGM was rather meticulous in ensuring their filmed history was constantly being maintained and inspected for the natural wear and tear to afflict all cinema art photographed on celluloid. Alas, that still did not stop the powers that be from storing their heritage in un-air-conditioned sheds for decades until some of that catalog was brought to the brink of extinction. Side Street was not to endure these ravages of time quite so severely, though it seems it’s original camera negative has not survived. This 1080p B&W image, however, looks spectacular, particularly the location work, all of it lensed by studio work-a-day cinematographer, Joseph Ruttenberg - a truly underrated artist with the camera. Contrast is uniformly excellent and age-related artifacts have been eradicated. Film grain is indigenous to its source. Nothing to complain about. The 2.0 DTS audio is crisp and subtly nuanced. Extras are all ported over from the previous DVD and include a rather meager audio commentary by critic, Richard Schickel, whose overall condescending attitude toward critiquing classic cinema I have never warmed to for very long. We also get the featurette that accompanied the DVD, plus several shorts and a trailer. Not a great assemblage of goodies, but probably what this pic deserves. Bottom line: Side Street will appeal to noir devotees. It’s an okay movie, but not to be confused as in the same league with the standouts in the noir subgenre like The Maltese Falcon (1941), Double Indemnity (1944) or The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

2