Dead End (1937)

The closure of a street forces the dwellers of a high rise to exit their luxury apartments via the rear service entrance for the space of a few days, which causes social classes to mingle and even clash.

A judge's brother, his son, a former, female neighbor of the tenement represent one side; an architect, a wanted criminal who's undergone plastic surgery come to visit his mother and old girlfriend (who has since become a prostitute, though the script is not very open about it,) a local cop, and a gang of youngsters who, potentially will be stuck in the titular dead end represent the other.

This could very well be the film which inspired Luis Buñuel to film Los Olvidados (1950), but seeing as to how it was made when, where and by whom it was it lacks the hard-hitting edge of a raw egg thrown at the audience's eyes.

First, the model work and sets are amazing, but they are also very artificial; giving the entire work an alienating, play-like flavor.

The dramas that unfold are contrived, moralistic, romanticized, fatalistic (and yet, we still get a sort of happy ending,) and are precisely the contrast against which Luis Buñuel worked.

The young gang members for the most part successfully capture some realistic aspects of youth often missed in American film (this awkward age is often mispresented as a live-action cartoon,) their humor, their violent behavior directed both towards outsiders and towards their own selves, their hopes, fears and insecurities, etc.

The only things the film carefully sidesteps are their female counterparts. The film is unrealistically chaste though maybe, post-Code not surprisingly so.

Where are the young girls these adolescent and young adults should be interested in? Why are they not admiring, molesting or pursuing passing females (attractive or unattractive, young or old? as if that made a difference in real life.)

It's a film of its time I suppose, and seeing how it's sticking to its Sidney Kingsley's origins one cannot fault it; but I do wish the film had more of a conviction to real life rather than to its microcosmic fantasy setting, (within its clean soundstage setting the presence of a single cockroach is quite disturbing,) it could easily have packed more of a wallop by using real slum locations, real dirt and real grime.

Most incredible aspect of the film: We are supposed to believe Bogart was 5'-11".

It was the first film appearance of the Dead End/East Side Kids, dramatic in this case, but which became increasingly comedic as time went on.

This is the film that started a slew of JD films, probably stretching to present day.

With Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, and Claire Trevor.