City Streets

Rouben Mamoulian approaches the gangster picture from an angle most 1931 films did not: the centre is not a mob's rise but a girl pulled into it, sent to prison, and the man outside who joins the organisation to get her out. Gary Cooper plays a carnival sharpshooter, Sylvia Sidney the girl dragged in by her stepfather. The story is Dashiell Hammett's and was written directly for the screen rather than adapted. With sound barely settled, Mamoulian uses interior monologue, letting us hear the sentences in her head during the prison sequence, an unusual experiment for the period. Most of the violence stays outside the frame. Who it is for: viewers interested in early gangster cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: anyone wanting action density, since this is a film about waiting.