Movie Review: Dead End (1937)

A drama about class tensions between rich and poor, Dead End explores life at the edge with plenty of ambience but only fragments of story.

In Manhattan, new high-rises are encroaching towards traditionally poor riverfront neighbourhoods. At the base of one new swanky building, a group of tenement boys (the Dead End Kids) spend their days coming up with new ways to cause mostly harmless mischief. Painter and aspiring architect Dave (Joel McCrea) keeps an eye on the street, while Drina (Sylvia Sidney), the older sister and sole guardian of one of the boys, pines for Dave's attention.

But Dave is now more interested in Kay (Wendie Barrie), one of the wealthy women occupying an apartment in the new high rise. Gangster Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart) grew up in the neighbourhood and now returns with his henchman Hunk (Allen Jenkins), hoping to reconnect with his estranged mother (Marjorie Main) and former lover Francey (Claire Trevor). The street kids get themselves into trouble when they bully a wealthy kid, while Dave stands up to Martin's intrusion, leading to violence.

An adaptation of the stage play by Sidney Kingsley, Dead End introduces the Dead End Kids to movie audiences and provides Bogart with another stock and poorly defined gangster role. The Lillian Hellman screenplay is notably sympathetic towards the hardscrabble street life of the disadvantaged, the rich folks here presented as uncaring elitists infringing on the turf of the oppressed. William Wyler does his best to add a sense of place, but the film remains a stage-bound spectacle essentially confined to one set.

Wyler does capture tension caused by the expanding footprint of wealth. The poor neighbourhood is now in the literal shadow of a building built by and for the rich. No commonalities exist between the two worlds, and when the curious but clueless Kay tentatively explores the run-down building where Dave lives, she quickly concludes she cannot belong here - or with him.

Hellman's script lacks a singular focus and instead invests an inordinate amount of time with the Dead End Kids and their juvenile street level shenanigans. But it remains unclear whether their lifestyle, consisting of horseplay, bullying, pushing and shoving, tough talk and threats of violence, is being condemned or celebrated as boys-being-boys. 

The children-as-a-product-of-their-environment theme is frail, and a feeble attempt to get away with a bullying-and-stabbing episode falls foul of the Hays Code. The good Dave and bad Martin are supposed to represent the two alternative outcomes for the kids to pursue, but neither man is provided a meaningful opportunity to chart a path or make a case.

Humphrey Bogart as Baby Face Martin generates the best electricity, and he enjoys a partial arc as his encounters with his mother and former lover don't go as planned. Along with Dave, Drina and Kay, the adults are far more interesting than the kids and create the basis for what could have been a more compelling drama. But at this waterfront, the grownups are on the sidelines and the dead end street is overwhelmed by rowdiness.

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Movie Review: Blood On The Sun (1945)

An anti-Japan propaganda spy adventure, Blood On The Sun never rises above rudimentary ambitions.

It's the 1930s in Tokyo, and Nick Condon (James Cagney) is the rambunctious managing editor of the English-language Tokyo Chronicle newspaper, owned by Arthur Bickett (Porter Hall). Nick antagonizes the Imperialist regime by publishing rumours of Japan's intentions to attack the United States. Reporter Ollie Miller (Wallace Ford) gets involved in a plot to smuggle incriminating documents out of Japan and is killed for his troubles, but the secret papers go missing.

Premier Giichi Tanaka (John Emery) leans on Nick to retrieve the memorandum, and deploys spy Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sidney) to cozy up to Nick. She is half-Chinese and her real loyalties reside with China. As romance blossoms between Nick and Iris, the Japanese authorities grow more desperate to retrieve the missing documents, and lives are placed in danger.

A crude attempt to whip-up anti-Japanese sentiment towards the end of World War Two, Blood On The Sun has a clumsy plot and bumbling execution. With white actors in all the Asian roles, a dreary MacGuffin in the form of barely-defined "papers", and the evil Japanese officials always giving Nick plenty of leeway and every opportunity to get away with whatever he is hatching, director Frank Lloyd fails to generate meaningful drama or tension.

Star James Cagney makes matters worse. Although never less than energetic and committed, his bull-in-a-Tokyo-shop persona, standing up to high-level Japanese officials with empty threats and squaring off in Judo confrontations with local goons, is almost comically misplaced.

The better moments of the script by Garrett Fort and Lester Cole expose the misinformation and fact-twisting expertise of militaristic regimes, and the film at least makes an attempt to delve into pre-war pan-Asian complexities through the characters of Iris and journalist Joseph Cassell (Rhys Williams), a recent arrivee from Shanghai.

The final third of Blood On The Sun unapologetically attempts to pilfer a Casablanca vibe, but just lurches towards the ending of a dreadful star slip.

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