Street Angel

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Audience Member A silent drama film with Movietone soundtrack, this was an early, transitional sound release that did not include recorded dialogue. It was one of three movies for which Janet Gaynor received the first Academy Award for Best Actress. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/08/23 Full Review Steve D Some of Gaynor's best work. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/24 Full Review Audience Member I am delving deeper into Frank Borzage's filmography and have watched Street Angel which is remarkably similar to 7th Heaven (1927) which was released the previous year and features both Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell as the lead actors. I have to say I did not like this film as much as that one but there are still things to appreciate in a film that tries for heavy melodrama and mostly achieves it's goals. It must be taken with a grain of salt but it's the sort of movie that I have a real love for, I am a fan of An Affair to Remember (1957), which endears me to a film that I might be a little harsher on if I did not like films from the genre already. Prostitute Angela, Janet Gaynor, is unsuccessful in her attempts to attract clients and so turns to being a thief in order to afford her ailing mother's medical care. One day she is caught by the police and sentenced to work in a workhouse for a year. Eventually she is able to escape and hooks up with a traveling circus led by Mascetto, Henry Armetta, and she meets painter Gino, Charles Farrell, whom she eventually falls in love with. Their union is threatened when the police recognize Angela and order her to return to the workhouse. She leaves a besotted Gino behind and stays in the workhouse for a year. She discovers that Gino was fired from the circus when she gets out and suffers due to her unemployment but is later discovered by Gino again on the shore. I would call this the weakest of the three films that Gaynor won her Academy Award for because it doesn't use her impressive talents well enough to justify it's length and her presence isn't as luminous here as it is in her other efforts. This is a fine film but I would recommend watching Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) first. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member Before sound cinema was all about the visuals and telling a story through emotions and expression. Frank Borage directed Street Angel purposefully to minimize the use of inter titles and to maximize the story telling through the visuals. This film is high melodrama and if one can see it as such and not judge it then one can get an awful lot out of it. The blurred images rendering the actors closeups' dream like and ethereal and transcending their love into the realm of the spiritual. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/12/23 Full Review Audience Member good sequel of sorts Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member "monkeys make a movie better". Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Street Angel

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