Synopsis
A night in June. The opening view is the skyline of New York. The view tracks into the streets. It is very hot, people are trying to cool themselves, children splash in the water from a fire hydrant. The camera follows a shambling woman in a shapless dress, Mrs. Jones (Bondi), as she walks down the street and stops on the steps of a brownstone tenement.
Some of the residents are sitting on the steps or leaning out the windows to escape the heat within. Mrs. Jones and the others talk about the heat, Mrs. Jones insults immigrants and Jews, and they gossip about Mrs. Maurrant (Taylor) and Mr. Sankey (Hopton), the milk collection man. Mrs. Maurrant comes out and laments the lack of love shown between people; the others, especially Mrs. Jones, hint about her affair with Sankey. Mr. Maurrant (Landau) arrives and the gossip declines, but hints do not cease. Mr. Maurrant is a rather unpleasant, harsh man. He demands the whereabouts of their daughter, Rose, and says she should be home by this time. Willie, the Maurrant’s son, comes home dissheveled. He has been fighting with another boy and does not say why, as Mrs. Maurrant tries to keep him quiet. It is obvious that the other boy was talking about his mother. Mr. and Mrs. Maurrant go in. Rose (Sydney) comes home with Bert Easter (Miller), her boss, who presses her to kiss him and return his affection. Rose is reluctant to become involved with him, although he stresses his affection for her. Easter leaves, and Sam Kaplan (Collier, Jr.) comes out through his window. He talks earnestly to Rose and is obviously in love with her. Sam is Rose’s best friend and confidant, but she is unsure if she wants to go beyond friendship. Rose goes inside.
As night settles on the city, activities on the block nearly cease.
The next morning, activity recommences: newspapers are delivered, a horse-drawn cart passes. A man buying old clothes walks down the street.
Mr. Maurrant comes out and tells his wife that he will be away a day or two. Rose is on the steps with Sam. Vince Jones (McHugh), an ignorant ruffian, comes out of the house and grabs Rose. She demands he stop, and Sam tries to free her. Jones pushes Sam away and threatens him. Rose tells Sam to pay no attention. Easter comes to take Rose to the funeral of the head of the office. Sankey arrives and goes to Mrs. Maurrant’s apartment. His presence worries Sam who hopes Mr. Maurrant doesn’t come home.
Unexpectantly, Mr. Maurrant comes down the street and goes into the house. Sam calls up to Mrs. Maurrant. He asks Mrs. Jones to run upstairs and warn Mrs. Maurrant. Too late! Mr. Maurrant finds Mrs. Maurrant with Sankey. Shots are heard and a window breaks. Mr. Maurrant comes out and threatens the forming crowd with his gun. He runs down the cellar steps and disappears. The police and an ambulance arrive. Rose, coming home on the bus, hears that a man has shot his wife and her lover. She rushes home and asks Sam if it was her mother. The ambulance attendants bring Mrs. Maurrant down on a stretcher. They do not allow Rose to go in the ambulance. The crowd is surging around them as Sam embraces and tries to comfort the crying Rose.
Rose goes to the hospital, and Sam leaves to get Willie from school and take him to his grandmother’s home. People gather on the street outside the house.
Rose comes home from the hospital where her mother has died. The police capture Mr. Maurrant and bring him from the cellar. As they lead him down the street, Rose embraces him. He tells her that he was drunk and had been hearing so much gossip he lost his head. They take him away in the police van.
Rose prepares to leave. Sam begs her to let him go with her. She refuses and says she will find herself as he finishes his schooling. She says they will see each other again. Sam runs inside crying as the camera follows Rose down the street and around the corner.
The city music comes up and the camera pulls back to a wider view.
Discussion
Street Scene was successful and highly acclaimed on Broadway in 1929 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Play of the Year. Producer Samuel Goldwyn, who purchased the rights, was determined to maintain the themes of the play. Goldwyn collaborated with the playwrite Elmer Rice on the adaptation for film. They choose King Vidor for director because of his success and sensitivity in portraying lower middle class life in The Crowd (1928).
Rice described a drab, eventless monotone as the essence of the play.
On
stage, the approach is underemphasis, the avoidance of the dramatic,
a
naturalness of speech and action by the people who live in the tenement and those
who pass it on the street. The play views the lives of these people but does not
establish a point of view about them. Rose Maurrant and her family are central,
but other personalities reveal themselves, in brief, but concise, appearances.
The plot requires a single set: the facade of a lower middle class tenement in the West Sixties of New York City, adjacent buildings, and the street fronting them. In his book On Film Making, King Vidor discusses the construction of the set. On a soundstage they constructed a half block with a duplicate main house at each end. In each scene, a half block beyond the house is visible. During filming, the filmmakers could use either house with the half block beyond in each direction, as if the house was at the center. Vidor could be shooting at one of the houses while the crew prepared a difficult set-up at the other.
Vidor considered injecting some action, going inside the tenement into some of the
flats or moving the action to other exterior locations away from the house. Vidor
rejected these ideas, instead he obtained movement by changing camera set-ups and
avoiding the repetiton of viewpoints and angles. A variety of details on the house
itself are viewed through the camera. The street in front of the building is also
utilized, i.e. spectators gathering on both sides of the street to view the site
of the murders. Vidor states that
this treatment proved most effective in preserving the visual and dramatic
impact of the play, without any artificial injection of movement.
The camera, the eye of the spectator, moves from person to person and follows people in motion, most notably at the opening and closing of the film: Mrs Jones’ shambling approach to the tenement at the beginning and Rose’s resolute walk away from it at the end.
The residents of the tenement represent a small slice of the lower middle class of New York. To escape the heat, they sit on the steps and hang out the windows. Their talk reveals their characters, their understanding, their prejudices: a good natured Italian musician and his wife, a pleasant woman trapped in a life devoted to the care of her mother, an anxious father-to-be, an intellectual Jew who denounces capitalism, his daughter, resigned to her life as an unmarried schoolteacher, and his son, smart, loving, devoted to Rose. The boorish Jones family contrasts to the more hopeful, friendlier characters: prejudiced Mrs. Jones is a mallicious gossip; Mr. Jones, an uncouth inebriate; Vincent Jones, an ignorant lout; Mae Jones, a shameless wanton.
The Maurrants are a disfnctional family. Mrs. Anna Maurrant wants love and warmth that her husband cannot provide. Mr. Frank Maurrant, distant and cold, unable to offer his wife any affection or companionship, responds with violence when she finds romance with another man. Despite the downfall of her family, Rose, a strong-minded, self-determined child of the tenement, has a hopeful future in which she will find herself, make her own way, and help her brother.
The atmosphere of authenticity is enhanced by the presence of many passersby, including policemen, postmen, junk dealers with horse and wagon, newspaper boys. The murders draw a large, inquisitive crowd.
Slyvia Sydney, young and sweet as Rose, easily projects the character’s innocence and determination. Under Vidor’s direction, William Collier, Jr., looking young and guileless, is surprisingly relaxed and sympathetic as the devoted Sam. In many talkies, Collier’s acting was rather stiff and unfocused. Making her first film appearance, Beulah Bondi, who had been in the theatrical production, masterfully brings out all the abhorrent characteristics of Mrs. Jones. Bondi had a forty-five-year career in films, equally excellent as lovable or hateful characters.
Street Scene (Sentimental Rhapsody), composed by Alfred Newman,
scores the opening sequences, starting with a comprehensive view of Manhattan and
gradually reducing the field of view until the camera focuses on the exterior of
one building, the tenement house. The score, a musical equivalent of the visual
view of New York City, is slow and jazzy, distinctly urban. The sounds of the city
are the background to life. The music represents these background sounds,
the vast, deep monody…the undertones of a city that never rests
as
J. Brooks Atkinson described it in his review of the play. The music was instantly
popular and has been used frequently as a concert piece. Seven films, produced
through the 1940s, use Street Scene (Sentimental Rhapsody) to
underscore establishing shots, often a panoramic shot of the Manhatten skyline,
following the main titles: I Wake Up Screaming (1941),
Do You Love Me (1946), Dark Corner (1946),
Kiss of Death (1947), Gentleman’s Agreement (1948),
Cry of the City (1948), and My Friend Irma (1949). In
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) the music is used as an overture.
Further Reading