Street Angel (1928) - film review

In Naples, a young woman named Angela wonders how she will find the money to buy medicine for her dying mother.  When an attempt to sell herself to a passer-by in the street fails, she tries to steal money from a sausage seller, but is caught in the act.  Pursued by the police, Angela evades capture with the help of a travelling circus.  Some time later, Angela is happily employed as a tightrope walker with the same circus.  She laughs at women who fall in love, and is convinced that she will escape that fate.  But then she meets Gino, a poor young painter who is instantly smitten with her.  Angela only reciprocates Gino’s feelings when she sees the portrait he has painted of her, a portrait that reveals her own inner goodness and the depth of the artist’s feelings for her.  When Angela breaks her ankle whilst performing her act, Gino suggests that they head for Naples, to start a new life together.  Angela reluctantly agrees.  After an idyllic few weeks together, Gino proposes to his sweetheart and insists that they marry the next morning.  Just when the couple’s happiness appears assured, fate intervenes.  Angela is recognised by a policeman.  Having been arrested and tried for soliciting and attempted theft, she is sent to prison.  But she remains happy in the knowledge that Gino is doing great work, painting a mural for the town’s theatre.  In truth, Gino is now a broken man.  Believing that Angela has walked out on him, he can no longer work and soon realises that he has nothing left to live for...

It was the immense success of 7th Heaven (1927) which led producer William Fox to reunite director Frank Borzage with rising stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell for another crowd-pleasing sentimental melodrama.  Street Angel proved to be an even bigger hit and secured the reputation of Borzage and his two stars, and the trio would work together one more time, on Lucky Star (1929).  Gaynor and Farrell were such a popular combination that they would appear together in another nine films, forming one of Hollywood’s most successful screen partnerships.

Although Street Angel was made on a comparatively modest budget (360 thousand dollars, roughly half of what 7th Heaven cost to make), it is one of Borzage’s most visually inspired films.  The influence of German expressionism is felt throughout the film, most noticeably in the scenes where Angela, the heroine, is tried and imprisoned.  Here, large menacing shadows are projected onto the walls to portray Angela as a helpless victim of circumstances.  The expressionistic sets and oppressive lattice of shadows imprison the unfortunate woman both physically and emotionally.  The later sequences, set on the misty wharf, were directly inspired by F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise (1927), in which Gaynor had recently starred.  The doom-laden mood which pervades throughout the scenes in which Angela has her final reckoning with a totally transformed Gino contains the aura of an expressionist horror film.  Farrell even resembles the vampiric fiend of Murnau’s Nosferatu in one or two chilling shots, and his murderous intent is unmistakable.

The high degree of stylisation that we see in Street Angel was no doubt in part necessitated by the film’s modest budget, but it does provide texture and atmosphere to what would otherwise have been a pretty anodyne tale.  Generally, Borzage’s films have a tendency for over-sentimentalisation which can be off-putting, particularly for those who are not familiar with this director’s work.  However, some of Borzage’s films are profoundly moving, not the tacky tear-jerkers that Hollwood would turn out by the van-load in the 1940s, but films that genuinely touch the soul of the spectator and awaken emotions of the real, not the synthetic, variety.  Street Angel is a prime example of this, a film that manages to convince us of the redeeming power of love without resort to the wild plot contrivances that we usually find in Borzage’s films.  Whilst Street Angel may not quite have the sublime lyrical potency of Murnau’s Sunrise, it is almost as effective at enchanting and moving an audience, and it certainly stands as one of Borzage’s finest achievements.

© James Travers 2010

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