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Street Scene

Play trailer Poster for Street Scene Released Aug 26, 1931 1h 20m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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89% Tomatometer 9 Reviews 72% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this slice-of-life tale captures one day on a residential Manhattan street. Brownstone neighbors gather on a sweltering summer evening to swap the latest gossip about the philandering Mrs. Maurrant (Estelle Taylor) and her alcoholic husband (David Landau). The Maurrants' daughter, Rose (Sylvia Sidney), who longs to escape her seedy existence, must deal with her parents' sins when her father learns of his wife's infidelity.
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Street Scene

Critics Reviews

View All (9) Critics Reviews
Richard Brody The New Yorker With the cinematographer George Barnes, Vidor-keeping the stagelike setting outside the apartment building-sends the camera plunging frenetically into the fray and conjures the city's architectural space with deep-focus images. Sep 21, 2020 Full Review Matt Brunson Film Frenzy One of the best of the early talkies. Rated: 4/4 Jul 22, 2024 Full Review Jorge Luis Borges Sur Street Scene, adapted from the comedy of the same name by the expressionist Elmer Rice, is inspired by the simple, negative desire not to look "standard." Dec 15, 2021 Full Review Ralph Bond Close Up Street Scene proves the tremendous possibilities of sound and music wedded intelligently to the pictorial image. Jan 20, 2021 Full Review Fernando F. Croce CinePassion A theatrical snapshot that's also a heaving Vidor vision May 24, 2015 Full Review Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 3/5 Jun 19, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (12) audience reviews
william k Remarkable adaptation of a award-winning play literally creates the titular street scene in a studio with good details and sense for realism; enhanced by overall excellent performances. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Wow! Despite its limitations for modern sensibilities (ethnic stereotypes, staginess, broad [and corny] humor), Street Scene packs a wallop. It's realistic, funny, exciting and tragic, with fine performances. Sylvia Sidney and Beulah Bondi are stand-outs, and the direction by King Vidor (The Crowd) keeps everything moving and in balance in spite of the static setting -- a tenement stoop in Hell's Kitchen. See it and be amazed! Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member A slice of life urban love letter, as only King Vidor could film. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member it really feels like a stage play :D Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/16/23 Full Review Audience Member Among the best movies I have ever watched! Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member Tensions run high in a multi-ethnic neighborhood during a New York heatwave. It sounds like the plot of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" yet this was filmed some sixty years prior. As well as Lee, it appears to have had a major influence on Woody Allen. If you've seen "Manhattan" (and if you haven't, stop reading and go watch it) several sequences will be familiar. The opening and middle montages of New York at sundown and sunset with their Gershwin-esque score by Alfred Newman bear more than a passing resemblance to Allen's great opening. Likewise the movie's final scene, involving a rebuttal of a lover by a young girl who is a lot more mature than he had thought. It's adapted by the writer Elmer Rice from his Pulitzer winning stage play and in the hands of an average director of the time it would probably be no more than a filmed play. Vidor is not average thankfully and this is a beautiful film in the visual sense. His camera is constantly on the move, probing the nooks and crannies of a very convincing set. He finds inventive angles which reveal subtle information such as the low shot which reveals the outwardly prim and proper Bondi adjusting her underwear out of sight of the neighbours she disrespects. Had this been made after the introduction of the code it would have been a very different film. Characters throw racial insults around casually and the local good-time girl flaunts her bra-less cleavage in a manner which must have provoked outrage at the time. Thanks to the pre-code dialogue, the movie has aged extremely well. The New York Times complained at the time that the dialogue was "spoken without sufficient pause". This of course was made a good decade before Hawks and Sturges would turn quickfire banter into an artform. The realistic language seems however to enable the actors to relax into their parts and the performances are so natural it feels like it was made thirty years later. Sidney is particularly good and looks fantastic. I actually came across this purely by mistake while searching for another of Sidney's movies, "City Streets". You can view the movie in it's entirety on Youtube and I thoroughly suggest you do. Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Street Scene

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Dodsworth 91% 86% Dodsworth Watchlist The Little Foxes 100% 87% The Little Foxes Watchlist Stella Dallas 82% 83% Stella Dallas Watchlist The Dark Angel 94% 76% The Dark Angel Watchlist These Three 100% 76% These Three Watchlist Discover more movies and TV shows. View More

Movie Info

Synopsis Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, this slice-of-life tale captures one day on a residential Manhattan street. Brownstone neighbors gather on a sweltering summer evening to swap the latest gossip about the philandering Mrs. Maurrant (Estelle Taylor) and her alcoholic husband (David Landau). The Maurrants' daughter, Rose (Sylvia Sidney), who longs to escape her seedy existence, must deal with her parents' sins when her father learns of his wife's infidelity.
Director
King Vidor
Producer
Samuel Goldwyn
Production Co
Samuel Goldwyn Company, Feature Productions
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Aug 26, 1931, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Nov 14, 2019
Runtime
1h 20m
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