Dead End | Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea

Dead End | Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea | SUPER DVD MOVIE

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Dead End

	Dead End Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea MGM (Video & DVD), 2005 average customer review:based on 31 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Above and Below

Most of us know Bogart and his performance here won't cause any major reconsideration of his icon status, but the revelations in DEAD END, especially its crisp new transfer, are in the performances of Joel McCrea and Sylvia Sidney. (Claire Trevor, too, has a wonderful part, and her wry expressiveness, which lasted on screen for close to 50 years, has an angelic touch to it in the film.) McCrea doesn't actually convince you that he's an architect, but he does seem like someone who might well have pulled himself up by the bootstraps and gotten himself out of the ghetto to join the wealthy crowd up on the terraces. As it turns out, he was once part of the crowd, an "O.G." you might say, and he and Bogart were comrades in arms a zillion years ago when both were boys together on these mean Manhattan streets.

He's not a naturally articulate actor and the pleasure is in seeing him try to communicate something of his passion for social justice to the other characters, who seem like the've all been hit over the head by the hammers of fate, so that they're walking around half-dead already. I wonder if the playwright. Sidney Kingsley, or the screenwriter Lillian Hellman, felt the same frustration trying to change things in Depression America, in the shadow of the Queensborough Bridge where this expressionist set looms bleak and tired, as though exhausted from sheer labor. McCrea supplies enough energy to ignite half a dozen sticks of gelignite, and the film keeps turning up the ratchet.

His opposite number is the exquisite Sylvia Sidney. More than any other actress, her appeal seems distant today, it's hard really to wrap your mind around the fact that she was Paramount's biggest star for many years. She is beautiful indeed, but not in any conventional way, and she was perfect for playing all sorts of parts--oddly enough she could play lower class, or royalty, but little in between. Her exotic looks are often used by directors who have nothing else to say but to display her ravishing face and hands, but when handed a proper role she can really sink her teeth into, well, get out of the way boys, there's no holding her back.

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SUPER DVD MOVIE

I RECIEVED THIS DVD LAST WEEK, AND COULD NOT WAIT TO WATCH IT
THE QUALITY AND SOUND ARE EXCELLENT,

"I'm tired. I'm sick. Can't you see it?"

This movie depicts the trials and tribulations of life on a city slum street. Humphrey Bogart plays a killer (Baby Face Martin) on the lam who returns to the old neighborhood (after disguising himself with plastic surgery to his face) to see his mom (Marjorie Main) and the girl he left behind (Claire Trevor). But Main calls him a "dirty dog" and slaps him, and Trevor is now a diseased hooker.

Joel McRae meanwhile thinks he's in love with a rich dame (Wendy Barrie) until he sees her turn her nose up at a cockroach and realizes their two different lifestyles won't ever mesh; he then gets with the right girl (Sylvia Sidney) for him, one who's on the same (wrong) side of the tracks as he. Bogart has a price on his head and eventually McRae kills him and collects the reward money.

At the heart of the movie are the Dead End Kids, tough talking hooligans who because of their rotten environment (so says the movie) are on the road to ruin (like Bogey). The picture is a little frayed at the seams today, but it was considered a tough-minded, realistic view of skid row when it first came out and was highly praised. William Wyler directed, with care and fervor. Definitely worth a watch.

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"Da mark a da squealah!"

DEAD END is director William Wyler's 1937 gangster melodrama masterpiece starring Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney, and Humphrey Bogart. Written by Lillian Hellman (THE LITTLE FOXES), the film incorporates several intertwining stories centered around a small neighborhood on the Lower East Side where the crowded and filthy tenements of the poor abut the newer walled luxury high-rises of the wealthy. Unemployed architect Dave Connell (McCrea) is torn between the working girl Drina (Sidney) and rich man's girlfriend Kay Burton (Wendy Barrie). Gangster "Baby Face" Martin (Humphrey Bogart) has also returned to his old neighborhood only to find out nobody is glad to see him including his boyhood friend Connell, his resentful mother (Marjorie Main) and his fallen former girlfriend Francey (Claire Trevor). Drina's brother Tommy (Billy Halop) leads a gang of rough street urchins (The Dead End Kids) who idolize Martin and appear to be headed toward criminal lives themselves.

Drina dreams of moving away from this "dead end" neighborhood, even of marrying a rich, make-believe stranger who will save her and her brother from their miserable lot in life. The film's theme is that poverty is the root cause of crime, and Drina's greatest fear is that Tommy is irreversibly headed down that criminal path. Her fears are further strengthened when Tommy is accused of attacking one of the rich men of the high-rises, the father of a kid his gang had been tormenting, and he goes into hiding after gang member "Spit" (Leo Gorcey) squeals on him.

Meanwhile, Connell realizes that he will never be able to support the lifestyle that Kay has grown accustomed to, even though she herself had humble origins. Her wealthy boyfriend has been making plans to take her away and she seems to be growing inclined to leave with him. Connell himself dreams of rebuilding and revitalizing his neighborhood, realizing that he has no plans to leave. At first quiet about Martin's return to the neighborhood, soon he begins threatening the gangster to leave town. Martin, however, has decided to stick around and pull off a job at the luxury apartments. His bitterness at his reception seems to compel him to stick around, even when it is growing increasingly dangerous for him to do so. The stage is set for a showdown between the criminal Martin and the idealist Connell.

DEAD END is somewhat notable for marking the first appearance of the "Dead End Kids" (Gorcey, Halop, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Bernard Punsly). They would go on to feature in a number of other films, eventually evolving into the "Bowery Boys," though this film along with 1938's ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES remains the finest showcase of their dramatic talents before they devolved into farce. In DEAD END, their antics are amusing without being overbearing and they function as an essential component of the film, illustrating the genesis of a fall from grace bred by the poverty and despair in such a neighborhood.

DEAD END is filmed in beautiful black and white by the great cinematographer Gregg Toland (CITIZEN KANE, THE GRAPES OF WRATH) and the circumscribed set is evocative of a stage production without being overly restrictive. The overlapping story lines and the ensemble character of the cast further enforce the feeling that one is watching a film that remains true to the vision of Sidney Kingsley's original stage manuscript. DEAD END remains one of my personal favorites from director William Wyler.

Jeremy W. Forstadt

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Four and a half stars- Dead End?......dead on!!

Nominated for four academy awards(winning none)this picture adapted from the Broadway play of the same name by Lillian Hellman literally grabs you by the collar and pulls you into its' world almost from the opening scene.
And this film is about TWO worlds,the rich who have built and occupied an apartment building right beside the East river and the slums who are right beside and below it.
And these are indeed seedy,crammed and bug infested slums.There are very few warts not shown.
The film opens as a garbage scow(a "gar-barge" in the vernacular) tows its' goodies on down the river and the residents brings theirs out to be picked up.The film revolves around the future Bowery Boys straight from the Broadway play to the screen.They hang around the street where a sign stands soberly over their "playground" which reads "Dead End".A metaphor to be sure and a strong one.
We are taken through the lives of many of the individuals who come into this melee and in the end come to the sobering conclusion that no matter what these people try to do
their lives will inevitably go nowhere.The gang will always be just a "gang",with the new generation waiting enviously to take
their place.A gangster who endures plastic surgery to go unnoticed has returned and ends up never leaving again.A man who went to college and trained as an architect is scraping by on odd jobs.The girl who loves him spends her existence trying to eake out a living while at the same time trying to keep her errant younger brother(part of the local gang) out of trouble with the cops.
Through all of this the rich that live for all intents and purposes WITH them live in a totally different and exclusionary world.There is one door that opens onto the street but this ironically is a "service entrance" and only used by the rich in a crunch which is hardly ever. And the doorman who guards this entrance(the lowliest cog in the apartment buildings' staff)astonishingly looks down his nose at the "low-lifes" just a few feet from the door step.This being a further tool to emphasize the disparity between the "igorance-is-bliss" rich world and the utter hopelessness of the slums.
This is one powerful film with alot to say and one that stays with you long after you watch it.
In conclusion you won't find a better picture of its' kind anywhere,it's cast is pure dynamite and the director creates the RIGHT atmosphere from beginning to end.On the techincial side this is a great print from the film vaults but more importantly it is a must own movie for any collector....period!

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7

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