sheilaom
01-19-2010, 12:20 PM
In the opening voiceover of Anthony Mann's Side Street, New York is described as an "architectural jungle," and "the busiest, the loneliest, the kindest and the cruelest of cities." With its realistic on-location setting, and Mann's particular brand of visual genius, Side Street is, above all else, about the isolation, and the beauty of New York City. The film opens with a spectacular aerial view of the Empire State Building, with Broadway careening down on the diagonal, creating geometric shapes between, buildings seeming foreshortened and strange from that view. Helicopter shots of this kind were new at the time, Nicholas Ray had used them in They Live By Night which, like Side Street starred Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell. The helicopter shots in the beginning of Side Street are vast, impressive, showing the city, its waterfront, its grids of organized streets, from far above. From the start, we can sense the attitude of the picture: man is small, insignificant, helpless against the giant forces working against him. Indistinct.
Farley Granger plays Joe Norson, a mailman, married to a woman named Ellen (played by Cathy O'Donnell), and they are expecting a baby. After a series of financial hardships, Joe and Ellen have moved in with her parents. Ellen is due to have her baby any day, but they can't afford a proper doctor, and instead she has to go to free clinics to get her checkups. Granger doesn't play Joe as a man desperate and at the end of his rope; not in the beginning anyway. He does what he has to do to maintain his job, he suffers in silence under the nosy presence of his in-laws, and he hopes that maybe... someday... he can save up enough money so that he and Ellen can have their own place.
However, when temptation arises... in the form of $200 dropped on the floor of an attorney's office where Joe delivers the mail, he finds it hard to resist. He returns to the office later, discovers the lawyer is absent, opens the filing cabinet where he saw the money put away, and takes the envelope. Once he is alone and opens the envelope, he doesn't find only $200. He finds piles of bills, $30,000 to be exact.
So begins Joe Norson's long dark descent into trouble. The money he has stolen is part of a blackmail scheme, worked up between the corrupt lawyer (played with steely aplomb by Edmon Ryan) and a goonish ex-con named George Garsell (played by James Craig).
Joe, unaware of any of the circumstances surrounding the money, immediately becomes haunted with guilt at what he has done. Side Street depicts a deeply moral world. The impact on Joe's conscience from his theft is immediate. He can't look his in-laws in the eye, he can't confide in his wife, he doesn't know what to do. Granger, as always, plays the perfect everyday guy, not all that bright, perhaps a bit gullible, and panicked like a wolf in a trap, as he tries to find a way out of the mess.
Bodies start to pile up. The criminals are looking for Joe, and Joe is looking for them because he wants to return the money. He must return the money, if he is to have any chance at all to live a normal life again. Unfortunately, he has stashed the wad of cash with a bartender he trusts (big mistake), and when he returns to the bar he finds it under new ownership. Side Street becomes a race to the finish, as the cops and Joe, separately, try to put together the pieces of the crime. Joe's wife has her baby, and Joe confesses to her, finally, what he has done, and she begs him to turn himself in. If he could just explain what had happened ... surely they would believe him?
There is an inevitability to events here, a fatalistic sense that no matter what one does, it will not make a difference. Joe's attempts to track down the blackmailers and their co-horts, in order to return the money, only looks like guilt by association to the cops who are following him, and so the more Joe tries to do right, the worse it looks. A truly harrowing experience, if you try to imagine it. Innocent until proven guilty is only a catchphrase in this dark world, and besides, didn't Joe steal the money in the first place? His entire trauma began with an immoral action on his part.
One of the things that really struck me about Side Street was its overt awareness of financial realities and how these things operate on the characters. It exists at all levels of the film. Joe's father-in-law was just demoted at his job, forced into a lower-level position; it was either that or be fired. A cop on the beat confesses to Joe early on in the film that he is retiring the next week and hopes to move to Florida. He should be able to make do "on half pay." Even one of the blackmailers gushes excitedly that with the money they have stolen he will be able to "pay for my kid's college education." Granger's character is not alone in his desire for a better life, for some ease and comfort. He says to his wife, when he confesses:
"I had this stupid notion that a couple hundred dollars could cure everything. You wouldn't have to have the baby in a charity ward. I'd built up a feeling of shame because everywhere I turned people had things I wanted you to have. I hated to admit, I was a flop."
The final showdown of the film goes down in front of the famously recognizable Subtreasury Building in lower Manhattan, a potent evocation of the financial stresses evident in the world of Side Street. Of course it would all end there.
Granger turns in a fine performance, and his increasing guilt and panic are palpable. He spends much of the film clammy with sweat, as he tries to undo his own wrong, going deeper and deeper into the vortex. He has a beautiful closeup when he first sees his baby son, in the bassinet at the hospital, and he is in awe of the baby's tiny fingers, his beauty, the miracle of him, all of that is on Granger's face, but immediately on its heels comes guilt, loss, grief. What has he done? It's a tough closeup, and could have gone over the edge into cheeseball emoting, but Granger breathes real life and real feeling into it.
Jean Hagen has a terrific cameo as a tired drunk nightclub singer named Harriet, an old girlfriend of the goonish ex-con. Joe tracks her down, in his search to find the blackmailers. When he meets her, she sits in the restaurant where she sings, throwing back shots, alone at her table, suspicious of everyone. She is seemingly a tough dame and yet, when she realizes she has a chance to get back together with the goon, she leaps at it, even if it means betraying Joe. "We can sit around my place like we used to, can't we?" she pleads to her criminal lover, in a display of need that made me ache for her. Harriet is not a bad girl, just sour with disappointment, emptily promiscuous, full of strange memories and bizarre dialogue ("He hit me when I recited Robert Burns," she confesses, in one of the best lines in the film) and willing to do anything to get back into the charmed circle. It's a touching portrait of what it means to be forgotten in the "architectural jungle" of Manhattan. How easy it is to be lost.
Farley Granger plays Joe Norson, a mailman, married to a woman named Ellen (played by Cathy O'Donnell), and they are expecting a baby. After a series of financial hardships, Joe and Ellen have moved in with her parents. Ellen is due to have her baby any day, but they can't afford a proper doctor, and instead she has to go to free clinics to get her checkups. Granger doesn't play Joe as a man desperate and at the end of his rope; not in the beginning anyway. He does what he has to do to maintain his job, he suffers in silence under the nosy presence of his in-laws, and he hopes that maybe... someday... he can save up enough money so that he and Ellen can have their own place.
However, when temptation arises... in the form of $200 dropped on the floor of an attorney's office where Joe delivers the mail, he finds it hard to resist. He returns to the office later, discovers the lawyer is absent, opens the filing cabinet where he saw the money put away, and takes the envelope. Once he is alone and opens the envelope, he doesn't find only $200. He finds piles of bills, $30,000 to be exact.
So begins Joe Norson's long dark descent into trouble. The money he has stolen is part of a blackmail scheme, worked up between the corrupt lawyer (played with steely aplomb by Edmon Ryan) and a goonish ex-con named George Garsell (played by James Craig).
Joe, unaware of any of the circumstances surrounding the money, immediately becomes haunted with guilt at what he has done. Side Street depicts a deeply moral world. The impact on Joe's conscience from his theft is immediate. He can't look his in-laws in the eye, he can't confide in his wife, he doesn't know what to do. Granger, as always, plays the perfect everyday guy, not all that bright, perhaps a bit gullible, and panicked like a wolf in a trap, as he tries to find a way out of the mess.
Bodies start to pile up. The criminals are looking for Joe, and Joe is looking for them because he wants to return the money. He must return the money, if he is to have any chance at all to live a normal life again. Unfortunately, he has stashed the wad of cash with a bartender he trusts (big mistake), and when he returns to the bar he finds it under new ownership. Side Street becomes a race to the finish, as the cops and Joe, separately, try to put together the pieces of the crime. Joe's wife has her baby, and Joe confesses to her, finally, what he has done, and she begs him to turn himself in. If he could just explain what had happened ... surely they would believe him?
There is an inevitability to events here, a fatalistic sense that no matter what one does, it will not make a difference. Joe's attempts to track down the blackmailers and their co-horts, in order to return the money, only looks like guilt by association to the cops who are following him, and so the more Joe tries to do right, the worse it looks. A truly harrowing experience, if you try to imagine it. Innocent until proven guilty is only a catchphrase in this dark world, and besides, didn't Joe steal the money in the first place? His entire trauma began with an immoral action on his part.
One of the things that really struck me about Side Street was its overt awareness of financial realities and how these things operate on the characters. It exists at all levels of the film. Joe's father-in-law was just demoted at his job, forced into a lower-level position; it was either that or be fired. A cop on the beat confesses to Joe early on in the film that he is retiring the next week and hopes to move to Florida. He should be able to make do "on half pay." Even one of the blackmailers gushes excitedly that with the money they have stolen he will be able to "pay for my kid's college education." Granger's character is not alone in his desire for a better life, for some ease and comfort. He says to his wife, when he confesses:
"I had this stupid notion that a couple hundred dollars could cure everything. You wouldn't have to have the baby in a charity ward. I'd built up a feeling of shame because everywhere I turned people had things I wanted you to have. I hated to admit, I was a flop."
The final showdown of the film goes down in front of the famously recognizable Subtreasury Building in lower Manhattan, a potent evocation of the financial stresses evident in the world of Side Street. Of course it would all end there.
Granger turns in a fine performance, and his increasing guilt and panic are palpable. He spends much of the film clammy with sweat, as he tries to undo his own wrong, going deeper and deeper into the vortex. He has a beautiful closeup when he first sees his baby son, in the bassinet at the hospital, and he is in awe of the baby's tiny fingers, his beauty, the miracle of him, all of that is on Granger's face, but immediately on its heels comes guilt, loss, grief. What has he done? It's a tough closeup, and could have gone over the edge into cheeseball emoting, but Granger breathes real life and real feeling into it.
Jean Hagen has a terrific cameo as a tired drunk nightclub singer named Harriet, an old girlfriend of the goonish ex-con. Joe tracks her down, in his search to find the blackmailers. When he meets her, she sits in the restaurant where she sings, throwing back shots, alone at her table, suspicious of everyone. She is seemingly a tough dame and yet, when she realizes she has a chance to get back together with the goon, she leaps at it, even if it means betraying Joe. "We can sit around my place like we used to, can't we?" she pleads to her criminal lover, in a display of need that made me ache for her. Harriet is not a bad girl, just sour with disappointment, emptily promiscuous, full of strange memories and bizarre dialogue ("He hit me when I recited Robert Burns," she confesses, in one of the best lines in the film) and willing to do anything to get back into the charmed circle. It's a touching portrait of what it means to be forgotten in the "architectural jungle" of Manhattan. How easy it is to be lost.