Street Scene | |
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Directed by | King Vidor |
Written by | Elmer Rice (play and screenplay) |
Based on | Street Scene (1929 play) by Elmer Rice |
Produced by | Samuel Goldwyn |
Starring | Sylvia Sidney William Collier Jr. Estelle Taylor |
Cinematography | George Barnes Gregg Toland |
Edited by | Hugh Bennett |
Music by | Alfred Newman |
Production company | |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release dates |
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Running time | 80 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $584,000 (estimate) |
Street Scene is a 1931 American pre-Code drama film produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by King Vidor. With a screenplay by Elmer Rice adapted from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, Street Scene takes place on a New York City street from one evening until the following afternoon. Except for one scene which takes place inside a taxi, Vidor shot the entire film on a single set depicting half a city block of house fronts.
The film stars Estelle Taylor, David Landau, Sylvia Sidney, William Collier Jr., and Beulah Bondi (her screen debut). The music score is by Alfred Newman, his first complete film score. Newman composed the eponymous title theme, in the style of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue . The theme has been used in other movies, including Cry of the City , Kiss of Death , I Wake Up Screaming , Where the Sidewalk Ends , The Dark Corner , Gentleman's Agreement and as the overture to How to Marry a Millionaire .
In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career. [1]
On a hot summer afternoon on the front stoop of a Lower East Side tenement building, Emma Jones gossips with other neighbors about the affair that Mrs. Anna Maurrant and the milkman Steve Sankey are having. When the rude and unfriendly Mr. Frank Maurrant arrives, they change the subject. Meanwhile, their teenage daughter Rose Maurrant is being sexually pressured by her married boss, Mr. Bert Easter. However, Rose very much likes her kind young Jewish neighbor Sam, who has a serious crush on her.
The next morning, Frank Maurrant tells his wife that he is traveling to Stamford on business. Mrs. Maurrant meets the gentle Sankey in her apartment, but out of the blue Frank comes back home. He realizes his wife is upstairs with Sankey, and runs upstairs. We hear shots and see the two men struggling as Sankey tries to escape through the window. Maurrant runs out with a gun. He has killed Sankey and fatally wounded his wife.
Maurrant is apprehended and is led away by police. He apologizes to his daughter Rose, who will now have to take care of herself and her young brother without either parent. Rose's boss offers once again to set her up in her own apartment, but she refuses. Then she sees Sam, and tells him she wants to leave the city. Sam pleads with her to let him go with her, but she tells him it will be better for the two of them to have a couple of years apart before they consider becoming a couple. Rose walks off down the street by herself.
The cast is listed here in the order shown in the credits:
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose 67-year film-making career successfully spanned the silent and sound eras. His works are distinguished by a vivid, humane, and sympathetic depiction of contemporary social issues. Considered an auteur director, Vidor approached multiple genres and allowed the subject matter to determine the style, often pressing the limits of film-making conventions.
One Foot in Heaven is a 1941 American biographical film starring Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi, Gene Lockhart and Elisabeth Fraser. The film was adapted by Casey Robinson from the autobiography by Hartzell Spence. It was directed by Irving Rapper.
The Whisperers is a 1967 British drama film directed by Bryan Forbes and starring Edith Evans. It is based on the 1961 novel by Robert Nicolson. Star Edith Evans received many honours for her leading performance, including her third Oscar nomination.
The Crowd is a 1928 American silent romance film directed by King Vidor and starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach. The feature film was nominated at the very first Academy Award presentation in 1929, for several awards, including Unique and Artistic Production for MGM and Best Director for Vidor.
Beulah Bondi was an American character actress; she often played eccentric mothers and later grandmothers and wives, although she was known for numerous other roles. She began her acting career as a young child in theater, and after establishing herself as a Broadway stage actress in 1925, she reprised her role in Street Scene for the 1931 film version.
Sylvia May Laura Syms was an English stage and screen actress. Her best-known film roles include My Teenage Daughter (1956), Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Award, Ice Cold in Alex (1958), No Trees in the Street (1959), Victim (1961), and The Tamarind Seed (1974).
Our Town is a 1940 American drama romance film adaptation of a 1938 play of the same name by Thornton Wilder starring Martha Scott as Emily Webb, and William Holden as George Gibbs. The cast also included Fay Bainter, Beulah Bondi, Thomas Mitchell, Guy Kibbee and Frank Craven. It was adapted by Harry Chandlee, Craven and Wilder, and directed by Sam Wood.
Street Scene is a 1929 American play by Elmer Rice. It opened January 10, 1929, at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City. After a total of 601 performances on Broadway, the production toured the United States and ran for six months in London. The action of the play takes place entirely on the front stoop of a New York City brownstone and in the adjacent street in the early part of the 20th century. It studies the complex daily lives of the people living in the building and the sense of despair that hovers over their interactions. Street Scene received the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Street Scene is an American opera by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book). Written in 1946 and premiered in Philadelphia that year, Street Scene is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play of the same name by Rice.
Paul Osborn was an American playwright and screenwriter. Osborn's original plays are The Vinegar Tree, Oliver Oliver, and Morning's at Seven and among his several successful adaptations, On Borrowed Time has proved particularly popular. He wrote the screenplays for East of Eden (1955) and South Pacific (1958), among other films.
Ruby Gentry is a 1952 film directed by King Vidor, and starring Jennifer Jones, Charlton Heston, and Karl Malden. In February 2020, the film was shown at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival, as part of a retrospective dedicated to King Vidor's career.
The Wedding Night is a 1935 American romantic drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Gary Cooper and Anna Sten. Written by Edith Fitzgerald and based on a story by Edwin H. Knopf, the film is about a financially strapped novelist who returns to his country home in Connecticut looking for inspiration for his next novel and becomes involved with a beautiful young Polish woman and her family. The film was produced by Samuel Goldwyn and filmed at Samuel Goldwyn Studios from early November to early December 1934. It was released in the United States on March 8, 1935.
Greta Granstedt was an American film and television actress.
The Texas Rangers is a 1936 American Western film directed by King Vidor and starring Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie. The picture was nominated for Best Sound Recording at the 1936 Oscars. The film was inspired by incidents from Walter Prescott Webb's 1935 history book The Texas Rangers, A Century Of Frontier Defense but filmed in New Mexico.
The Show-Off is a 1946 American comedy film directed by Harry Beaumont based on the play of the same name by George Kelly. It stars Red Skelton and Marilyn Maxwell. It was previously filmed in 1926 as The Show-Off starring Ford Sterling, Lois Wilson and Louise Brooks and in 1934 as The Show-Off with Spencer Tracy and Madge Evans. Lois Wilson also appeared in the 1934 version, but in a different role.
Main Street is a 1923 American silent drama film based on the 1920 novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. and directed by Harry Beaumont. A Broadway play version of the novel was produced in 1921. It was the first film to be released after the foundation of Warner Bros. Pictures on April 4, 1923.
Bodil Rosing was a Danish stage and American film actress in the silent and sound eras.
David Landau was an American stage and film actor who appeared in 33 films from 1931 to 1935. He appeared on Broadway in 12 plays from 1919 to 1929.
Upstairs Downstairs is a British drama series, broadcast on BBC One from 2010 to 2012, and co-produced by BBC Wales and Masterpiece. Created and written by Heidi Thomas, it is a continuation of the London Weekend Television series of the same name, which ran from 1971 to 1975 on ITV.
The Woman on the Index is a lost 1919 American silent drama film directed by Hobart Henley and starring Pauline Frederick and her then husband playwright Willard Mack. It was Frederick's first film at Goldwyn Pictures after coming over from Paramount. It is based on a 1918 Broadway play, The Woman on the Index, that starred Julia Dean.