Side Street (1949)

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Jean Hagen

Have I Seen It Before: Never.

Did I Like It: You’ve seen one b-noir film (or even more than a few of the a-list examples in the genre), you’ve probably seen them all. Hapless Regular Joe* wanders into a situation where a “whole lotta dough” is his for the taking. Figuring “Hey, why can’t a lucky break come my way? Why shouldn’t it?” he either takes the money outright or agrees to the scheme at hand which is the only imaginable obstacle between him and that money.

Things don’t work out. Often because a dame (see that footnote) is either too wise to be good or too good to be wise. Mix. Repeat.

This sounds like I’m about to complain that Side Street is a little humdrum. It might be. Even at 82 minutes, it feels like there may be ten minutes to cut out of the thing in the middle. There are some Side Streets featured in the film, but not nearly enough to prevent me from wanting to suggest a different title. I would really prefer the film to at least be called Side Streets (plural), but alas I wasn’t working for MGM’s publicity department in the 1940s.

But it has more than enough going for it to make one not resentful for the time spent viewing. I’m having a hard time these days not enjoying any film in black and white, even if it is a little weighed down by voice over narration. That might once again qualify as damning with faint ambivalence. The action in the film’s final minutes is quite good, but the big recommending factor? While he’ll be remembered for Strangers on a Train (1951) or even Rope (1948), I’m struggling to think of another actor who is more capable of communicating simmering guilt with a simultaneously hangdog and twitchy expression than Farley Granger. The man was built for noir.

*It is never a Hapless Regular Jane, because A) Women are incapable of haplessness in these films, unless they’re freshly (or about to be) murdered. B) They have a different role to play in these stories.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

Director: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: And that’s the thing that’s more than a little unnerving to me, because I loved this a very great deal. Maybe I’ve always been just slightly allergic to the big technicolor musicals, because I—despite all of my bluster to be one of those quintessential movie fanatics—am fundamentally an idiot.

The film is a bubbly journey through the transition from silent to synchronized sound, and makes it an exciting new adventure for the characters involved, not the insurmountable collision with obsolescence that it was for pretty much everybody other than Charlie Chaplin. Every character draws a guileless laugh from me. Every song—not just the one that got completely coopted by A Clockwork Orange (1971)—I found myself humming as I left the screening, and am still doing so as I type this review nearly a week later.

I should have been spending decades loving this movie and bothering everyone around me about how great it is. What else have I been missing? It boggles the mind, but I don’t feel shamed by the realization that I’ve been missing out. At worst, I feel sorry for the rash of people on social media as of late who bemoan what they see as movie snobbery, for they may never get to stumble across a movie that elicits this kind of response. It’s more a feeling of excitement that the very realization that this movie exists implies that there are any number of movies that have existing long before I was ever born and are just sitting there waiting for me to discover them.

I’m quietly, but insistently thrilled that I have so much more to see and experience. Good morning, indeed.