A Deservedly Forgotten 1955 Gangster Melodrama “The Naked Street”

"Film noir" has had considerable fashion in recent years and many post-WWII movies have been marketd on DVD as noirs, most of them illegitimately in my view, including pretty much the whole Fox Noir series. In recent months as Netflix has decided that its future is with streaming and that DVDs are "old media," its streaming arm (which is keeping the "Netflix" name as the sending out of DVDs has been given the awkward name unmemorable name "Qwikster"). A major problem for what will continue to be "Netflix" is its limited catalog of titles.

Netflix has added man obscure post-WWII black-and-white movies (e.g., The Big Night). The cast of "The Naked Street" (1955) sounded interesting, but having watched the movie, I realize that it was deservedly forgotten. I can't improve on the verdict of the not-always-reliable New York Times movie hanging-judge of that day, Bosley Crowther: "Crime is again demonstrated as an unprofitable form of enterprise - and we might add, an unprofitable form of entertainment - in a little screen-filler called 'The Naked Street.'" He found it cheering that a newspaperman (played by Peter Graves) ands up with the girl (Anne Bancroft), but that does nothing for me.

I don't think the movie has the ambiguity to be a noir (with the possible partial exception of Jerry Paris as Latzi Franks, the best friend who betrays the unheroic leading man, Farley Granger as Nicholas 'Nicky' Bradna. I'd categorize the movie as a gangster movie.

It certainly has some of the main clichés of gangster movies, topped by the ruthless gang leader doting on his mother (Else Neft) and cherishing Family. When Phil Regal (formerly Regalzyk) discovers that his younger sister, Rosalie (Anne Bancroft before she became an actress) is pregnant, he gets her impregnator (Nicky) not just out of prison (Sing Sing) but off Death Row. This he accomplishes by convincing the witnesses (of what was clearly not a premeditated murder, but a killing that occurred during the commission of a robbery) to recant their testimony.. DA Blker (the ever smarmy Whit Bisell) knows they have been terrified, but can do nothing about it. Sweet Rosalie suspects nothing, certainly not that the father of her unborn child who has been sprung from Death Row is a killer.

Phil arranges for a speedy wedding and for Nick to work a straight job, not giving him work in Phil's various criminal syndicates. When the baby is stillborn and Phil sees that Sis is being neglected and is not happy with her husband, Phil frames Nicky for the killing of a gangster Phil wants dead, and Hollywood-style justice ties up loose ends in typical absurd ways. Thankfully, writer-director Mawell Shane passes up one opportunity for display with Phil and Mama.

As much as I like Farley Granger's refusal to play by the rules of the Hollywood closet of the day (a day that is not really over) and smitten as I am by his good looks, in the early 1950s (IMHO, he was the most handsome movie star until Alain Delon came along), I have to grant that he was not much of an actor. He was a victim in all of his most memorable roles (They Live by Night, Strangers on a Train, Side Street) and/or weak and guilty in the cases of "Rope," "Edge of Doom," "Girl in the Red Velvet Swing," "Senso," and "The Naked Street." And invariably doomed, as here. Phil calls Nicky a punk, and Granger conveys Nicky's resentfulness and lack of street smarts.

Quinn was playing a role that was cliché all of the time and had no trouble looking annoyed at the ineptness of his underlings… and no trouble looking ethnic (as gangsters were 'spozed to). Bancroft was young, pretty, Italian, and had not yet developed a personality, at least not one that came across on screen. (Why the family was Slavic rather than Italian is a puzzle for which I don't have the key.) Graves was young and earnest, not especially engaging or credibly heroic. Say "wooden"?

The only reason to watch the movie is to see its rising stars (Bancroft, Graves, Quinn) in their youth and Granger in the afterglow of his matinee idol era.I was amused when Phil's mother tells him he was fifty pounds lighter when he used to do something, since Quinn was still very slender and would have looked positively anorexic at a weight of fifty less pounds (he perhaps had put on that much, though I think less, when he became "Zorba, the Greek," the most iconic role for the actor of all ethnicities.