Side Street

Anthony Mann’s Side Street reunites Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, breakout stars from Nicholas Ray’s earlier They Live By Night (1948), as a newlywed couple victimized by their own desperation trying to survive the bitterness of postwar New York City (“This is New York, where two strangers living 20 feet apart may never meet”). Opening with aerial views of the Empire State Building and other iconic sites, the film puts New York center stage, a voice-over sharing stats and anecdotes about the city’s inhabitants in exactly the same vein as The Naked City (1948) the same year, overhead shots of cars zooming down extremely narrow streets like mice in a maze. Joe Norson (Granger), a part-time mailman feeling pressured to give his wife a middle-class life, thinks he’s stealing $200 from a law office’s filing cabinet, but it turns out to be $30,000, a product of extortion and corruption. Joe’s transgression submerges him in a criminal hell he can’t escape and reminds us how easily a naïve young man can become entangled in evil. Aside from the plot, the film benefits from beautiful nocturnal cinematography that highlights the city’s coldness and some extraordinary action shots, such as Joe’s self-ejection from a taxi and the surreal strangulation of Harriet (Jean Hagen).