Dead End

Sadly, I'm not as enthusiastic as other reviewers. I have seen much of Bogart's filmography, from The Petrified Forest to his last (The Harder They Fall), and my collection now includes nearly 30 of his movies. I watched this film with reasonable expectations, being aware that his part there is a support one. After all, Bogart was stealing the show even in his early years, when his contributions were merely secondary. Well I just watched Dead End for the first time yesterday and was left rather cold and even disappointed by it. As appropriately mentioned by others, it's really very (like in 'too much') theatrical, but not in a good way, at least for me. I was not familiar with these "Dead End Boys" and unlike others, I was far from impressed and was in fact irritated by their performance. It's one thing to deal with the overall atavistic overwrought style so typical of so many '30s movies, but it's another to try packing up as many pointless rough exchanges between young street brats as you materially can within an hour and a half. I mean, what is the point of keeping these absurdly annoying "misérables" relentlessly and dumbly insulting either each other or their opulent oppressors? As long as they're yapping their brains out and erase any silence or moment for reflection that might subsist in that blatantly dated movie play (a deliberate choice of words on my part...). Reading about how these young actors, who had been sent over to Hollywood to transpose their NY theatrical act to cinema, caused absolute chaos and sheer havoc offstage, I am almost tempted to think that Wyler, an otherwise very competent and often brilliant director, dealt with this wild bunch as best as he could, but likely experienced serious difficulties while piloting the making of this movie, with mixed results, to say the least. After Dodsworth the year before, what a turnoff! In his career, Wyler succeeded a lot in entertaining his viewers, and I was hoping that this one would be no exception. However... I am able to cope with most typical '30s movies along with their exaggerated declamatory style and machine-gun stance delivery. That's not the point.... I'm afraid that the Dead End play has failed to be adapted to cinema and is in fact a rather grating Frankensteinian creature with too many theatrical parts and functions to be palatable in the cinematographic language. The movie tries too hard to deliver social messages while attempting to narrate a potentially enlivening story and to present characters to whom we should somehow relate, but who end up leaving us indifferent at best (e.g. most of the main adult characters, including Bogart) or worse, extremely annoyed as with many of the Dead End bunch, I'm afraid to say. As for the major characters, there isn't enough space and time left for them to grow on the viewer and to become well-formed entities. I have seldom watched a Bogart as wooden as in this movie, and this has nothing to do with this being a support contribution. Bogart almost always stole the show before he started playing lead parts. No. As I see Dead End, it was in the end a showcase for the Dead End Brats and a list of their socio-political statements, a sort of 90-min allegory of the abysmal gap between rich and poor. Anything but a well-designed movie. There have been countless films dealing with this subject matter, and I'm afraid that Dead End is .... well, quite aptly named, after all. In more ways than one.

Someone mentioned in an earlier post that "Dead End" was set in New York's Hell's Kitchen. That's a mistake. It's set on the east side of Manhattan in a neighborhood that is now known as Sutton Place. Back then the poor were still in the area. Btw, the body of water the kids are swimming in is the East River, not the Hudson. For years, I had through that the neighborhood was the Lower Eastside, till one day, while watching this film, I spotted a street number painted on the side of one of buildings, which was in the east 50s. I believe East 52nd street. Then I did a little research and found out the location! Peace

i'm a huge Bogey fan, so naturally i'll watch anything with his name in the credits. however, i was not prepared for "dead end." this is one of the most brilliant films i've ever seen and i can't understand why the eberts and roepers and maltins never talk about this one. it begins as a familiar story, rich vs. poor along the east river. a gang of kids hang around outside the ritzy, new apartments in the neighborhood. tommy, it's leader and his "friends" notice a boy who has been earning pocket money as a babysitter. when tommy steals his money, a fight breaks out. off in the distance, two men in silk suits watch the fight. tommy's sister drina breaks up the fight. drina is a working class woman on strike, trying to earn the money she deserves. Dave is her on-again, off-again love interest who has done everything in the book to try to rise out of poverty, but still can't get ahead. Dave has been seeing Kay, a young woman torn between a future with a man she thinks she may love (Dave) and the comforts of wealth. we find out the two men in silk suits are gangsters, one being the famous killer, baby face martin, who has returned to his home to see his mother and old girlfriend. he is rejected by his mother, who is disgusted by his profession and track record and his girlfriend, who has become a common prostitute. their are a million intertwining story lines that add up to one incredible climax, but essentially this film is about the cycle of poverty and class issues. the performances are terrific. Sylvia Sidney (not a big name today, but a damn good actress) and Joel mccrea are perfection as the films heroes. Bogart is unforgettable. this is one of the dozens of gangsters he played, but i would rate this performances as high as duke manatee in petrified forest. he's tough and street smart, but with each disappointment we see evidence of his emotions leaking out. the gang of kids remind me of the jets in west side story- they don't like anyone, not even each other half the time. look for Marjorie main (ma kettle before she was ma kettle!) in a touching, but heartbreaking scene as Bogey's frail, aging mother and Claire Trevor (another fine, forgotten actress) as Bogey's sweetheart turned greedy streetwalker. the best thing about this film is they way each character believes he or she can overcome the way of life he or she seems fated to live with. each character tries desperately and fails. this is the way real people are. there's no Hollywood, sugar-coatedness about any of it. no over-dramatic music or made-for-the-previews lines. it's grossly realistic. this film would be on my top 50 list, maybe even my top 25. it's that good.

It's unfortunate that now morons write gangster films in which all they do is try to "outsadist" everyone else's comic book bad guy. This film showed so much not just about gangsters, but how they fit into the world, and how other characters fit it. Joel McCrea is a trained architect who makes small change as a painter in the run down tenement. The Dead End Kids are varied characters themselves, with the nerdy voiced Gorcey, the later stooge Huntz Hall, and the likable Jordan, for example. And Bogie is the main gangster. We only see two gangsters for most of the film, and it moves at such a great pace that we forget it is only a meager setting, basically a city block. Bogie's bad guy would shine today. He goes back to his old neighborhood to see his mother and ex girlfriend, and their reactions, and his, are totally believable. This film is so well written, that modern gangster film writers are put to shame. No wonder they try to hide this film. There is so much in this film, that it is hard to say more without writing an essay, but it is exciting, dramatic, and adventurous all at once. All the actors, and all the crew, shine.

Dead End the film adaption of Sidney Kingsley's play that ran for 687 performances during the 1935-1937 seasons, was a harbinger of what Alfred Hitchcock tried to do in such films as Rope and even more so in Rear Window. The whole story is told on one very complex set showing the stark contrast of the rich penthouse dwellers with the inhabitants of the nearby tenements and flats. Building that set on stage and for the screen must have been one expensive proposition so it was a good thing Sidney Kingsley wrote a hit. It may be one set, but the plot of the film involves three stories and how they interconnect. Story number one is about Joel McCrea, a former slum kid himself who still lives down there while he tries to get a job as an architect. He's involved with two women, rich socialite Wendy Barrie who lives in the penthouse and Sylvia Sidney who played more working class women than anyone else during the Thirties. Sidney works as a seamstress in a garment factory and she's currently on strike and she's got a younger brother to support who causes her much grief. The younger brother is Billy Halop and Sidney worries about the gang he runs with, the kids who later became known as the Dead End kids, later East Side Kids, later Bowery Boys. Their a rough bunch and they get a visit from a celebrity of sorts. Which leads us to the third track in the person of Humphrey Bogart who grew up on this same block and is now a wanted fugitive of the John Dillinger variety. The kids and McCrea recognize him, the kids worship him and McCrea is willing to give him a pass for now, he's no rat. All their stories mix in this plot which does hold the interest through out the film. Besides the Dead End Kids who didn't all play the same roles you see them play on the screen only one other player came over from Broadway for the screen version. Marjorie Main who we usually know as the rambunctious and brassy Ma Kettle plays a very serious part indeed as Humphrey Bogart's mother. You'll not forget her as she rejects her hoodlum son both the anger and sorrow she expresses, it is haunting. Bogart got another jolt in his trip down memory lane in the slum in the person of Claire Trevor. She's usually a good time girl with a heart of gold. Her heart may be golden in Dead End, but she's a woman who's seen the seamy side of life as a prostitute. Very few prostitutes were portrayed as such during the days of The Code so in that sense Dead End was quite daring. The film is firmly set in the Depression Thirties. That same area where in certain shots you can see the Queensborough Bridge in the near distance is some of the richest real estate on earth now. Those same buildings that are portrayed as slums now rent to yuppies at obscene figures if in fact they survived. Though Dead End is a dated piece of work, it does offer a great glimpse into urban life for the rich and poor. This is one of Samuel Goldwyn's best productions and William Wyler gets uniformly fine performances from his talented cast of players.

This film is VERY typical of the type of gangster film Bogart made (and grew to hate) during the 30s and early 40s--before he was able to break out of this mold with Casablanca, High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. And, despite it being a rather standard theme for Bogey, it was well-made and very watchable. His acting, as usual, is stellar and the film is well-written, if a bit overly melodramatic. In fact, while a very good film, I knock off a point because it features the Deadend Kids as well (later to morph into the Bowery Boys). In general, I disliked these kids and felt they tended to annoy many in the audience. After all, a little Huntz Hall and Leo Gorcey go a LONG WAY!

I recommend watching "Dead End" and the later "Angels With Dirty Faces" as a double bill. Both are highly enjoyable; and they have a lot of parallel elements. Also, Humphrey Bogart and the future Bowery Boys appear in both films. "Dead End" often gets short shrift in comparison, which I think is totally unfair. It is a social drama, sure, which some people will find "preachy," but the points it makes still resonate today. What really makes it stand out, though, are the fine individual performances. Bogart's role is much bigger than the one he plays in "Angels With Dirty Faces," and is extremely intense as a gangster coming home to his mother and his true love. Sylvia Sidney is absolutely luminous in her portrayal of a young woman who would have a promising future if she lived anywhere else, but is a frustrated, trapped animal in the slums of New York. Joel McCrea stands with one foot in each world, having grown up rough in the neighborhood, but without turning gangster, and still able to dream of better things for himself and the people around him. Look also for a couple of brilliant, though brief, appearances--Marjorie Main's chilling delivery as Bogie's exhausted and distraught mother, and Claire Trevor's bittersweet portrayal of his old girlfriend. It's not as heavy as it sounds, though. There is a lot of humor sprinkled throughout, partly because "Dead End" features the first screen appearance of the future Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/Bowery Boys. If you're a fan, it's a lot of fun to watch them here with their rough edges still on, as tough young punks. Billy Halop, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall are terrific in this, a little grittier than in "Angels With Dirty Faces."

DEAD END is an odd mix of social commentary and crime drama. For the first half of the running time, not much happens apart from the obnoxious Dead End Kids gang getting into various scrapes in their local area. The emphasis is on petty crime and degradation, a comparison between the sheltered lives of the rich and the desperate lives of the poor, and how the gulf between the two can lead to hatred and violence. At the same time as all this is going on, a sub-plot involves a decent hard-working local man, played by western star Joel McCrea, and a hard-bitten gangster type, played by Humphrey Bogart. The two men hate each other on sight and eventually their sub-plot takes over the story, leading to some exciting crime thrills. The Dead End Kids too get drawn into the mix, and the whole thing builds to a thrilling climax. DEAD END is a little unsatisfying to begin with - you just want to see someone give those brats a thrashing - but it picks up a lot and ends on a real high. The emphasis is on realism throughout and the film is all the better for it.

This is stage bound. Not in the way of successful filmed plays like the lovely "Member of the Wedding." It seems to have been painstakingly modeled after the stage play. The play may have shocked in its day but it's very dated now, in this movie version. Maybe fans of the Dead End Kids, who grew out of this, like it better. I am not a fan. The whole thing, or almost all of it, seems a strange combination of high-mindedness and cliché. The casting is wildly erratic. Sylvia Sidney is somewhat touching as the working girl. She was better in other such roles and she probably occupied an apartment in the neighborhood, an apartment not like her character's but like that of the rich kid who's beat up. Bogart: I really can take him or leave him. Here he seems far from his best. Claire Trevor comes off well in a small but pivotal role. Joel McCrea was a great movie star. He was suave, had good comic timing for Sturges and many others and was excellent for Hitchcock. He is unforgettable in "The More The Merrier." But does anything bout him say "born and still living in the slums of New York City"? Surely not to me. This movie has almost no punch today. The writing and directing credits are topnotch. The cinematography is beautiful. But it really, really shows its age.

Dead End is one of my personal favorites, as I watch it 10 or more times a year. The 1930's New York City setting lends itself to a host of interesting perspectives. The talent assembled for this production is why the film withstands the test of time and makes Dead End a movie which I never get tired of viewing. Greg Toland's cinematography is masterful. Max Steiner's musical score is brilliant. He perfectly blended the feel of a fast paced urban theme which then becomes a beautiful and dramatic orchestral piece. Max Steiner had a real genius for bringing the right mood to whatever the film demanded. Of so many brilliant Steiner scores, I find this to be among his finest. William Wyler's direction is awesome, as always. I particularly like the constant background flow of pedestrians going about their day throughout the entire picture. The movie's cast is stuffed with talent. Character actors like Marjorie Mane and Esther Howard fill small segments with memorable scenes. Claire Trevor's portrayal of a sweet girl who became disillusioned and wound up as a prostitute, is poignant while remaining gritty and realistic. The Dead End Kids are great throughout the movie. Ward Bond brings a plus to the movie in his role as the upscale apartment's doorman. I like Allen Jenkins and think no other actor was better suited to play the sidekick to Bogart's character as the prodigal gangster, returning to his old neighborhood. Dead End is one film that has countless elements to enjoy. The level of talent on both sides of the camera keep me watching it over and over again.