The Regeneration

Owen is ten when his mother dies and he is left on the street. The Conways next door take him in, beat him and raise him. By seventeen he has learned that might is right. By twenty-five he runs the gang in the neighbourhood. Then Marie Deering arrives, a woman of good family who teaches poor children to read. Owen slowly pulls back. But Skinny, who has taken his place, comes back for him, and the past will not let go. Raoul Walsh's first feature; seventy-two minutes, silent, shot on the real streets of the Bowery in New York, with Rockliffe Fellowes as Owen and Anna Q. Nilsson as Marie. It counts as one of the earliest American gangster films.