Street Angel

In Naples, Angela cannot find the money for her sick mother's medicine. She tries to earn it on the street, is caught, and is sent to a reformatory by the court. She escapes and joins a travelling circus. There she meets a painter called Gino, who paints her portrait, and the two begin living together. She does not tell him about her past. Then the police find her. Frank Borzage directs. Janet Gaynor plays Angela and Charles Farrell plays Gino. The pair made many films together in this period and were among the best known couples in American cinema; Seventh Heaven is by the same team. Janet Gaynor was named best actress at the first Academy Awards for her performances in this film, Seventh Heaven and Sunrise; the award that year was given for a body of work rather than a single role. It belongs to the last phase of silent cinema, and a version with synchronised music and sound effects was also released; the transition to sound was happening in exactly these years. The studio sets are deliberately unreal: the streets of Naples are foggy, the lights are points in the dark, and the place is built like a dream. The style has to do with the influence of German cinema carried into Hollywood at the time. Who it is for: viewers who like silent melodrama and the cinema of Borzage. Who it is not for: the emotional pitch is very high, the plot rests on coincidence, and the woman's suffering is aestheticised too far.