Mamoulian and Montage: City Streets

As a fan of Rouben Mamoulian's films (someone once referred to me as an apologist), I was obviously thrilled to finally get my hands on a DVD of his second film, City Streets. Released in 1931, this pre-code gangster/romance flick was penned by Dashiell Hammett (his debut as a screenwriter), and shot by cinematographer Lee Garmes, best known at for his work with von Sternberg. Fairly gritty for its time (there are nearly a dozen murders in the film), and apparently a favorite of Al Capone's, its lack of dramatic depth is more than compensated in its creative, groundbreaking confluence of sound and image.

With a wafer-thin plot centered around the beer rackets, the film tells of Nan (Sylvia Sydney at her loveliest), daughter of racketeer Pop Cooley (Guy Kibbee), and her relationship with carnival sharp-shooter The Kid (Gary Cooper), who unfortunately gets caught up in the underworld owing to pressure from Nan. Double crosses galore, tough guys constantly reaching into the jackets for the guns, and a climax that includes a car chasing a speeding train (it will be horse the following year in Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight), the film will never be remembered as a genre masterpiece. However, it seems this is by design, with Mamoulian far more interested in exploring the medium (with its then-new sound capabilities) than he is the narrative arc.

Though a former stage director, Mamoulian shows little of his theatrical roots in his early films, all of which contain nods to films and filmmakers that preceded him. A shot of a prison with birds flying overhead recalls a similar shot during the execution scene in Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, and his use of pictorially expressive devices (porcelain cats, a match being snuffed out) is reminiscent of early Hitchcock. Mamoulian's continual shifts from realism to symbolic imagery have led some to all but dismiss him as a filmmaker. (Dwight Macdonald argued that his films are "marked with a vulgarity which is continually straining for effect, which cannot express a simple thing simply.") I've read that there are a few firsts in the film, including the use of subjective voiceover and an all-diegetic music soundtrack. (In one scene, music heard as a car is driving down the street suddenly stops as soon as the car parks. Did they even have car radios back in '31?)

Yet most impressive about City Streets is its use of montage, in the classic Eisenstein/Pudovkin mode. (Macdonald claims the film was used as a model in Russia, though I've not read that anywhere else.) Even more striking than the city-awakening montage that opens Love me Tonight is the first four minutes of City Streets, which, save for the gangster figures, could have come from a Soviet production. Though I'm far from being fully versed on 30s Hollywood cinema, I can't think of another American film that so calls to mind the masterpieces of the early Russian cinema.

Follow the jump to see images from the film.

The film opens on a close-up of wheels barreling down a street, followed by a medium shot of a line of trucks. A quick dissolve to a glass of beer reveals the trucks' contents, which is followed by a dissolve to a beer manufacturing plant. A group of racketeers are standing over a giant vat; cash taken from a hat with monogrammed initials changes hands. A slow zoom on the foamy beer in the vat dissolves to a rapidly flowing river, where we see the same hat go floating by -- the first of the film's many murders.

Equally impressive is the sequence that introduces us to The Kid (one of the best I've seen in ages.) Two scenes bridged by an interesting transitional device -- Pop sees Nan sitting in a coffee shop after a crime has been committed. He signals her with a wink, she responds in kind. Nan jumps into a cab; fade to black. Fade in on an extreme close-up of Nan, this time with her left eye closed. The camera pulls back to reveal she's aiming a gun -- it's a carnival shooting gallery. A reverse wide shot shows The Kid in the distance. Cut to a close-up of a white hat, the wearer of which turns to reveal himself with a look of surprise that quickly turns into a smile that is 200% charm.

As far as I know, there's no legitimate DVD release of City Streets, which is a shame, as it's a wonderful bridge between his first, Applause, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Comments

[Daniel]

I love this film! What a lovely write-up. Is this the movie where the man's alibi is his cigar burning down or am I confusing it with something else?

[Brandon]

So, any hint of where the discerning viewer may be able to pick up one of these dvd's/dvd-r's?

You turned me on to LOVE ME TONIGHT and for that I am forever grateful...

[Editor A]

Not commercially available on DVD but you get a DVD?! What a gyp for everyone else!
I saw this in a theater at UCLA recently-- a fantastic amazing print.
The film was disappointing. I went because of Hammett,
Cooper dazzled with star quality in his early appearance (and fabulous hat)
and Sidney dazzled with her usual star quality and acting.
But the film is a bit stinky. It is more interesting
when you subject certain aspects of it to different kinds of analysis, as you have done here,
although we should not lose sight of the fact that the the film is not actually very good.
I take some issue with comparing it to Soviet Montage, since that would lead to
some disappointed viewing if one were to go into the film after hearing that,
because this is so firmly rooted in classical Hollywood narrative structure and filming techniques.
I think what you're talking about in the opening beer sequence is simply a montage, not Soviet Montage.
That carnival sequence with Cooper and Sidney was stunning on the big screen, as was some
of the beach footage.

[Filmbrain]

Danny --

Yes, this is the one with the cigar ash. Wonderful scene, especially with the snap cuts of the porcelain cats during the dialog.

Brandon --

Someone emailed me and said there is a cheapie public-domain disc of this floating around, but I can't seem to find any confirmation of that.

Editor A --

I agree that as a straight narrative it isn't all that impressive, but Mamoulian's direction and quasi-experimental (for the time at lest) gestures make it quite fascinating. As for the montage, I'd argue that, when compared to other montage sequences from the era (including Love Me Tonight), the opening sequence has more in common with the silent Soviet cinema than with its Hollywood counterpart. Admittedly though, I'm no expert on the matter.

[Marshall Deutelbaum]

Mammoulian's theatrical background does show through at the beginning of "Love Me Tonight." The film's opening transformation of noise into rhythm repeats the similar opening Mammoulian created on broadway a few years earlier for (the non-musical version) of "Porgy and Bess." That noisy introduction of Catfish Row at the beginning of the play became the film's introduction to the sounds of Paris.

Marshall Deutelbaum

[James]

Yes, car radios are that old, but barely. In 1930, the Galvin Corporation introduced the first commercial version, the Motorola model 5T71. The name Motorola was coined for use with automotive radios, which seems obvious when you think about it.

[Morgan]

What would you consider "Masterpieces of the early Russian cinema." I generally respect what you have to say on films, and I am quite lacking the soviet cinema genre, do you have any suggestions?

[Filmbrain]

James --

Thanks for the information! I had no idea. I was thinking of that Laurel & Hardy short where they have a record player under the hood...

Morgan --

Other than the obvious three from Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, Strike, October), there's Kuleshov's By the Law, Pudovkin's Mother, Vertov's The Man With a Movie Camera, three by Dovzhenko -- Zvenigora, Arsenal, and Earth (a must see), and Medvedkin's great Happiness.

Unfortunately, as the political climate changed under Stalin, filmmakers like Eisenstein and Pudovkin fell afoul of the new regime, and they were charged with being formalists. This gave rise to the socialist realism movement, which resulted in some pretty dull, uninspired films. Montage was all but eradicated.

[burritoboy]

Re Morgan's request:

Boris Barnet's A Girl with a Hatbox (1927) is hilarious.
Vladislav Starewicz's The Revenge of a Cinematograph Operator (1912!) is even better.

[cubie]

Great review. Glad to see some Mamoulian love out there. Stills look great and description of editing sound wonderful. Hope I can see this soon.

I'd also agree Dovzhenko's Earth is a must see. Got to see it on the big screen at MoMA san subtitles (boo).

TCM in one of their promos uses the shot of Cooper turning around. I see it almost daily. Now I know where it's from.

[BMF]

I saw this film over thirty years ago at a theatre in NYC, located at 80 Saint Marks Place. I will remember it, I think, until the day that I die.
I never needed to be told that it was pre-Code. To be honest, I just don't understand why there is not a DVD of this film available.

[TaxiSlim]

I saw this at the AFI in the early 70's and now I'm waiting for TCM to show it so that I can record it. An absolute classic of the genre, and it was Sylvia Sidney's first feature.

My favorite scene is when the "The Big Fella" asks Guy Kibbee for permission to rub out Gary Cooper, his romantic rival for Sylvia Sidney. Kibbee's reading the Sunday funnies, and barely looks up at The Big Fella and says something to the effect of "That's OK with me, Chief!" In terms of all-time great Guy Kibbee lines, that ranks up there with his "Call me Abner" line in Gold Diggers of 1933.