Rouben Mamoulian’s City Streets (1931) is a remarkable film, straddling and helping define both the nascent gangster and film noir genres, and is full of the visual flourishes associated with Mamoulian’s direction.
(See the entire film here).
For such an interesting narrative, it’s not a surprise that the film’s story was conceived by the pioneer of modern American crime fiction, Dashiell Hammett – known most notably for the creation of private detective Sam Spade, the prototype for all the private investigators that until this day inhabit the American crime novel.
Set in the prohibition era, the overarching theme of City Streets is an intense love story, between the stepdaughter of a gangster, Nan Cooley, played with modern sensibility by Sylvia Sidney, and a naive, awkward hick – simply known as The Kid, played, slightly irritatingly, by Gary Cooper, who has only one thing going for him – his aptitude with guns, which lands him a job working as showman in a shooting gallery.
Intense sexual passion and attraction defines the young couple’s relationship – it’s a bond reminiscent of that between Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) and Bert Tara (John Dall) in Joseph H. Lewis’ Gun Crazy (1950) – and overrides their mismatch in social status – Nan is an ebullient city girl used to wealth, while The Kid is the terse country bumpkin with no ambitions but a sense of honour and integrity that makes him resist his girlfriend’s efforts to get him a job working for her stepfather in ‘beer’, i.e. in the bootlegging business.
Then a series of events leads to a magnificent role reversal. It starts when gangster boss Big Fella Maskell (Paul Lukas) – a suave but lecherous swine who insists on seducing or raping all his underbosses’ molls – offers promotion to Pop Cooley if he murders his chief, Blackie, who has had the temerity to show his displeasure when Big Fella Maskell tries to steal his girlfriend.
Pop Cooley readily agrees to the killing and inveigles Nan to cover up his crime. Unfortunately for Nan, she is caught by the police and, even though she refuses to implicate her stepfather, who has promised to keep her out of jail, she ends up serving a prison sentence.
Feeling betrayed by her stepfather and now having realised that the values and code of the underworld is nothing but a sham, disguising ruthless self-interest, she renounces her gangster connections and looks forward to a more honest life with The Kid, who she now understands was right all along.
However, with Nan in jail, Pop has persuaded The Kid that she needs money to pay for the best lawyers to get her out. Joining the bootlegging business, Pop has persuasively argued, is the only way for The Kid to earn the money to facilitate her release.
The Kid becomes the gangster Nan wanted him to be, his gun skills and calm temperament making him an immediate success. Even worse, The Kid takes to the life, enjoying the money, clothes, cars, fancy restaurants and clubs, the power, prestige and respect. It is this new man , fully immersed in the gangster life, that Nan finds on release from prison.
In fact, The Kid has become such a good gangster, has risen so far up the ranks, that he is now a confidante of Big Fella Maskell. The problem is, as we know, that Big Fella Maskell likes to demean his underlings by having his way with their wives and girlfriends.
Big Fella Maskell turns his depraved attentions to Nan. She contemptuously and strenuously resists his advances but, like all men who abuse their power, who obtain power just so that they might abuse it, he won’t take no for an answer, promising her jewels and furs if she sleeps with him willingly, rape and violence if she continues to defy him. The Kid’s reaction to this humiliation sets the scene for a terrible showdown.