Street Angel. 1928. Directed by Frank Borzage.

(2/19/00)

I just didn't care for this film. Maybe you just have to be in the right mood for it. I didn't like the opening section, set in Naples, because it all looked like it was on a giant stage set with the camera roving around. I started to like it much better when Janet Gaynor goes away with the circus. Somehow, the first part seemed stifling.

Janet Gaynor really didn't appeal to me very much, although I admit that she was able to act a wide range of moods. She changes throughout the film and carries that off rather well. Charles Farrell seemed likable enough, but his character just seemed such a simp that he got to be irritating. I kept thinking that Gaynor ought to find herself a real adult to hang out with. Of course, his innocence was part of his charm--for her, anyway.

The whole scene in which Gaynor spends an hour with Farrell, not telling him that she was going to go back to prison was annoying. If he couldn't handle the truth she could have told him something. It didn't ring true. However, it was effective when the lovers are enjoying their happiness and the knock at the door comes. That worked. And all the tension when Gaynor was trying to say goodbye while the policeman waited outside worked. But as a whole the sequence didn't come off.

I liked the scene at the wharf (or wharves). That had a nice atmosphere and I was getting interested. But then Farrell chases Gaynor into the church and we see the painting he had made of her altered into an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and placed above the altar. Yes, this had been prepared for, but nonetheless it was just to much for even me to swallow--and I'm willing to swallow just about anything. It jarred me and took me right out of the film. From that moment on I was not involved with it at all.

But as I said, maybe I would feel differently about it if I were in the right mood.

(2/22/00)

I also wanted to mention that I found the soundtrack very distracting. Street Angel is one of those films that are basically silent, but which have a soundtrack with music and sound effects. Here we have whistling and bits of singing. I found that very distracting and didn't like it at all.