Truly Dreadful Film

good back-story, and good acting

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

With "Street Angel," Frank Borzage's romantic drama starring oft-paired Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, the first phase of my movie project has come to an end.I set out to see every available movie that was nominated in any category at the very first Academy Awards. Gaynor received a Best Actress nomination for her performance in "Street Angel" along with two other films, "Seventh Heaven" and "Sunrise." "Angel" is certainly the weakest of those three. Many of Borzage's dramas were overly sentimental and full of implausible plot developments, but his touch was usually light enough to overcome these tendencies. Not so in this film. The melodrama is ladled on so thick you can barely see the movie through the syrup, and the film takes forever to get around to the resolution the viewer can see coming a mile away."Street Angel" was oddly also nominated at the following year's Academy Awards in the categories of Art Direction (Harry Oliver) and Cinematography (Ernest Palmer). Eligibility rules must have been looser back then.Grade: C

Street Angel (1928)What a great surprise!Just as sound was all the talk and all the necessity of Hollywood, and just as Fox Studios has released a quasi-sound masterpiece in the fall of 1927 called "Sunrise," a few months later comes "Street Angel" continuing in a silent mode from Fox's great director Frank Borzage. And it's lively, fast, well acted, and frankly terrific.Janet Gaynor above all, like Lilian Gish in her films, lifts this story through sheer acting and screen presence. She's a live wire and a tender victim, a fun and emotional and interesting person. This comes across without the supposed exaggerations of silent cinema, and is enough to make you forget the silence completely. Her partner in all this, Charles Farrell, is also good, though a bit stiff and pretty like Gary Cooper would be a decade later.Equally terrific is the filming--the photography and editing, and the necessary set design and atmospheric effects (night, fog, great heights, tiny rooms). Photographer Ernest Palmer had already made a slew of films at Fox and was at the top of his game, and he had just worked with Borzage (and Gaynor and Farrell) in the equally well made "7th Heaven" the year before. It's beautiful, glowing, subtle stuff.The plot? More interesting that you'd expect at first, and more complex, though with a strand of inevitable sweetness, too. The title refers to a prostitute, and streetwalking girls are a recurring part of the film, from the fringes. The place is Italy in the 1920s, and Gaynor plays Angela who turns to the street to try to get enough money to save her mother's life. Things quickly spin out of control from there, with jail and a small time circus and a life of impoverishment in Naples for our two leads. Temporarily. Farrell plays a painter with some talent but imperfect ambition and no business sense, so promise turns to heartache. And then things shift again.If there is anything constant in this movie it is the good inner souls of the main characters, and so you suspect they will at least have a chance of surviving the hardship that seems to never quite be their own fault. I'm sure most of the audience identified with that then, just as I could now. The scenes are really dramatic, the interactions between the actors completely fresh and honest, and the photography fluid and modern. Yes, it's a sentimental "old" movie, still, of course, but with so much going on so well, you'll be glad.

It's a moody and often expressionistic film like Gaynor's "Sunrise" (1927)...which I consider far superior in technique and story. Two things I find VERY DISTURBING about "Street Angel" --(1) She asks the cop for 'one little hour' with her fiancé' before going to jail, but she went to jail right after her mom died without burying her or explaining to the cops or the judge. (2) She does not explain to her fiancé' why she's going away and, after she gets out, does not try and explain either. For this reason, I do not find Gaynor's character very appealing or sympathetic at all. She's definitely no "angel" in this movie. I feel sorry for the painter guy. The film's only redeeming qualities are the scenes inside their apartment which are tenderly and exquisite.

"Street Angel" misses greatness by inches. One of three famous late silent movies starring Janet Gaynor (the others were "Sunrise" and "Seventh Heaven"), it's an ultra-romantic melodrama with enormous power. Frank Borzage, a specialist in this kind of film, pulls out all the stops to make this seem almost like an other-worldly fable; the story is painted in broad brush strokes, and the plot has a few echoes of "Les Miserables." The sets and cinematography are outstanding; Gaynor is heartbreakingly beautiful, and her performance is superb. The film's biggest flaw-- almost the only one-- is that near the end it indulges in a wildly improbable coincidence, and it's always awkward when a film closes on a note like that. It isn't quite as good as "Sunrise--" very few movies are-- but for most of its running length this rich, lush film is an absolute joy to watch.