Truly Dreadful Film

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Blistering performances.

I watched this on TCM and found it interesting, though in many ways just a showcase for the music. Very '20s, very period-piece stuff, with the usual strange choreography. I thought the title Street Girl was a bit of a tease however, as the "girl" turned out to be a homeless violinist who gets involved with a down-at-heels dance band. What stood out for me however was the noisiness of the sound track, the worst I have ever heard. I realize this is an early talkie and they were probably still struggling with ways to muffle the sound of the camera. But every shot seemed to have its own peculiar frequency, from whirring to humming to grinding to something like a garburator. I wonder now if early-talkie audiences noticed or cared about this, but it seems to me that many must have longed for the sophisticated accompaniment that had evolved by late in the silent era. What also amazes me is the leap in sophistication that took place in only a couple of years: by 1931, people had forgotten all about silent movies and screenwriters/actors had hit their stride. This is great to watch if you're a sound technician/film historian or both.

Hungarian blonde Betty Compson (as Frederika "Freddie" Joyzelle) gets fired from her job as a New York waitress, for breaking a dish over her boss' head. Although the film is suggestively titled "Street Girl", Ms. Compson avoids dabbling in the world's oldest profession. Instead, Compson hooks up with attractive John Harron (as Mike Fall), who is so taken with briefly homeless Compson, he asks her to move in with his jazzy musical group.As "The Four Seasons", Mr. Harron's "Mike Fall" is teamed with Jack Oakie (as Joe Spring), Ned Sparks (as Happy Winter), and Guy Buccola (as Pete Summer). Compson, conveniently a violinist, joins "The Four Seasons" both at home and on stage. The group is lively and likable; especially, the smiling Mr. Oakie, in his spring. The "Seasons" become successful, and romance blooms for Compson and Harron; but, a visiting Prince threatens the duo's happiness...Compson, who was at an artistic peak around the time silent films found their voice, tends to be a little too theatrical in "Street Girl", her starring vehicle; she certainly proves her versatility on the screen, however. Leading man Harron gives director/co-producer Wesley Ruggles the film's best acting performance; he (perhaps unfairly) certainly makes you wonder what heights deceased brother Bobby Harron might have reached in the "talkies".The early Oscar Levant music (with lyrics by Sidney Clare) is very good. Gus Arnheim "and His Coconut Grove Ambassadors" skillfully dubbed their instrumentals; apparently, this is before future star Fred MacMurray joined the group. The frequently heard "Loveable and Sweet" is considered a jazz classic, in the cover version expertly recorded by Annette Hanshaw with the Dorsey Brothers. Although the early "RKO Radio Picture" production is more than a little rough around the edges, the musical/comedy genre storyline is solid.******* Street Girl (1929) Wesley Ruggles ~ Betty Compson, John Harron, Jack Oakie

I'll say quite a few good things about "Street Girl." The overall plot is serviceable, the songs by Oscar Levant and Sidney Clare are nice period pieces (Levant spent much of his life trying to play on the pop-songwriting turf of his good friend George Gershwin, and he wrote one truly great song — "Blame It on My Youth" — but Gershwin he wasn't), the big musical finale "Broken-Up Tune" is suitably spectacular (I suspect this number was originally in two-strip Technicolor even though it only survives in black-and-white, and in the print just shown on TCM there's one shot in the final sequence that is photographically quite inferior to the rest, suggesting that the film as it stands was pieced back together from partial prints), and above all Wesley Ruggles' direction, though hardly at the imaginative level of Mamoulian's, Capra's, Wyler's, Milestone's or Vidor's in their first talkies, is quite fluid. The camera moves around quite a lot, the editing is fast-paced and the actors speak relatively naturally without the seemingly endless pauses between lines (sometimes between words!) that make a lot of early talkies virtually unwatchable today.That's the good news. The bad news is the writer's dorky decision to change the origin of Betty Compson's character from a real country, Austria, to a fictitious one, "Aregon" (presumably not to be confused with the real Spanish province of Aragon); the awful accent Compson affects to sound suitably "Aregonese"; the casting of Jack Oakie without giving him any laughs (and he's utterly unable at any point to convince us he can actually play the clarinet); and a pretty sluggish pace despite all the camera movement and quick cutting. Also there's the obvious cheapness of using the same pre-recording of the song "Lovable and Sweet" all three times it's performed (you can tell because of the Beiderbecke-esquire "smear" John Harron's trumpet double performs in his solo each time). It ends up an O.K. movie but you get the impression it could have been better made a few years later — indeed it WAS made better on two separate occasions; "The Girl from Paris" isn't that great a movie either (though at least Lily Pons' accent is her real one!) but it's a damned sight better than this.

This musical comedy near the dawn of the sound era follows the routine formula (boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl) but sports a nice jazz combo, with John Harron playing piano and trumpet (sometimes at the same time), Ned Sparks playing violin, Jack Oakie with a mean clarinet and Guy Buccola on the accordion. I never tired of the one bouncy show-stopper by Oscar Levant and Sidney Claire called "Lovable and Sweet," despite it being played and sung several times. In fact, I was humming it for a day or so. What surprised me was seeing Jack Oakie looking so thin I almost didn't recognize him, and John Harron as the romantic lead, since I was used to seeing him only in bit parts in 30's movies. I'm not sure if the music the boys played was dubbed or not, but the female lead, silent star Betty Compson, was an accomplished violinist and surely did her own playing. I rather enjoyed watching this film despite its triteness.