Street Angel

Released Apr 9, 1928

1h 42m

Drama

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Reviews

78%

Audience Score

500+ Ratings

A young woman on the run from the police joins a traveling circus and falls in love with a painter.

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Robert E. Sherwood

LIFE

Street Angel is a Neapolitan romance which starts encouragingly and then settles down to a pace of deliberate dulness.

Oct 5, 2021

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Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

In Frank Borzage's melodrama, Janet Gaynor's turn as a poor woman who resorts to prostitution must have impressed the Oscar voters for she won Best Actress that year

Rated: B

Apr 17, 2012

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Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

A well-made movie that can't quite decide exactly what kind of movie it would like to be.

Rated: 8/10

Jan 13, 2009

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Louisa E

Not as good as 7th Heaven, but still good to watch. The passages of time were clunky and the ending inappropriate for modern audiences. Some good cinematography.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

05/08/23

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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 out of 5 stars

02/08/23

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Steve D

Some of Gaynor's best work.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/20/24

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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 out of 5 stars

02/01/23

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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 out of 5 stars

01/12/23

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Audience Member

good sequel of sorts

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/21/23

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Frank Borzage

Director

Janet Gaynor

Angela

Charles Farrell

Gino

Alberto Rabagliati

Policeman

Cino Conti

Policeman

Guido Trento

Neri the Police Sergeant

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Synopsis

A young woman on the run from the police joins a traveling circus and falls in love with a painter.

Director: Frank Borzage
Screenwriter: Monckton Hoffe, Philip Klein, Marion Orth, Henry Robert Symonds
Distributor: Fox
Production Co: Fox Film Corporation
Genre: Drama
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 9, 1928, Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Mar 17, 2017
Runtime: 1h 42m

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