The Naked Street

Maxwell Shane's The Naked Street opens with a `torch' murder under the low-rent end of the Brooklyn Bridge; it's a hit ordered by mob boss Anthony Quinn. Quinn finds family problems vying for his attention, however. His kid sister, Ann Bancroft, has been left pregnant by a murderer on death row (Farley Granger, who here could double for Eddie Fisher at about the same time). Quinn intimidates the original witnesses and secures Granger's release in order for him to make an honest woman out of Bancroft.

Investigative reporter Peter Graves, meanwhile, is working on an exposé of Quinn's underworld empire. He gets nowhere, however, until Quinn's quick fix of his sister's dilemma starts to unravel. Her baby is still-born (probably due to all the sherry her groom bought her to brighten her confinement), leading Granger to start to womanize and brush up his criminal skills. This only provokes Quinn, who tries to undo his earlier meddling by meddling some more....

The Naked Street blows in some high-minded social commentary in an attempt to supply moral uplift to an otherwise gritty crime drama. In that, it keeps step with the fads of the mid- to late-fifties, with many reminders of the `tenement' origins of criminals (despite the fact that, as here, these monsters' mothers are invariably old-country saints). And the plot's ironies, though obvious, hold interest.

But Shane, who six years earlier had done the more authentic City Across The River along similar lines, can be a clumsy director. He lets too much of the story get told through Grave's voice-over narration rather than telling it himself, on film. And there are nagging little lapses: there's a phony hijack in which a car runs a truck five times its size off the road; at an illegal all-night poker game in the back room of an ice-cream shop, the neon sign blazes `Millie's' to beckon every cop in the five boroughs. Still, Quinn does well in one of his last `heavy' roles, and early Bancroft offers glimpses of the fame to come. But the puzzle is, what was there in this role tempting enough to lure Granger back from Europe?

This film is a film noir wannabe and just doesn't quite make it. The plot, a mobster (Quinn) who holds his family as a icon of decency, discovers his sister (Bancroft) is "jammed up" by a local neighborhood playboy (Granger) who is on death row for murder. Bringing his influence to bear, the gangster gets the playboy a new trail and his freedom so he can marry his sister. But, the playboy can't stand it and gets caught by the hood stepping out on his wife. So, the gangster sets his roving brother-in-law up to be framed for murder. But, as his playboy son-in-law tells him, "I didn't kill this guy but I did kill the first one..." and the cops use him to chase the hood to his death while his mother is bringing him a bottle of seltzer water to have with his weekly dinner with her.

Film buffs will enjoy seeing the younger Quinn in scowling action as well as Granger and Bancroft in their younger days. The acting is solid, the storyline somewhat pedestrian and there's no video or DVD. You'll have to catch on the late show.

A rather silly, though not exactly unentertaining, noir. Anthony Quinn stars as a big-time gangster who discovers his sister (Anne Bancroft) is pregnant. The catch? The guy who did it (Farley Granger) is now on death row. Quinn won't let his sister's kid be born a bastard, so he's goes about intimidating the witnesses to Granger's crime and gets him a retrial. It works (the justice system was even more screwed up back then than it is now, apparently), but, even though he's now married to Bancroft and should be uber-grateful to Quinn for springing him, Granger is still kind of a douchebag, treating poor Bancroft like crap, smacking her around and cheating on her and stuff. This, of course, does not please Quinn whatsoever. Peter Graves also co-stars as a newspaper man who also has a thing for Bancroft. Quinn is really good in the film, but it's not one that plays to Granger's strengths. He's best as a nervous type, like in Rope, Strangers on a Train and Edge of Doom. He's not a good tough guy. This can also be found on Netflix Instant.

Anthony Quinn stars in "The Naked Street," a 1955 film with Farley Granger, Anne Bancroft, and Peter Graves.

Quinn plays a gangster, Phil Regal, whose sister Rosalie (Bancroft) is pregnant and unmarried. Nowadays, this would be a cause for celebration. Back then, it was a scandal. The father is Nicky Bradna (Granger) who is at the moment on death row for killing a liquor store owner while he was stealing his money.

Regal is a wonderful son to his mother (Else Baeck) and a protective brother, but he's basically involved in lots of illegal activities.

Phil wants Nicky to marry Rosalie, so he drops bundles of cash in the right places. Suddenly the witnesses have second thoughts about what they saw and the DA is willing to give him another trial. Soon he's out, married to Rosalie, and driving a truck, which is not what he wanted to do. But big brother insisted.

It doesn't take Nicky long to start acting up - he and Rosalie suffer a tragedy, he doesn't like his job, and Regal wants him out of the way.

Pretty good noir, and Anthony Quinn does a wonderful job showing us the human being beneath the tough gangster. Anne Bancroft is very young, but excellent in her part, and Farley Granger does well as the loser husband.

"The Naked Street" is a derivative story, so it's not particularly special, but it is worth a look.

For such a low-budget, unknown film, "The Naked Street" has an abundance of riches in the casting department. Ok, so maybe Anne Bancroft wasn't well known, but Farley Granger certainly was. And Anthony Quinn had already won an Oscar, for pete's sake!

Quinn is the best thing about this movie, playing a gangster who manipulates the system to spring a death-row inmate out of prison. Why? Because he knocked up Quinn's sister (that would be Bancroft) and Quinn doesn't want his nephew being born out of wedlock. Whew, racy stuff for 1955. So Granger and Bancroft marry, he makes a lousy husband (no surprise there), and the baby dies in childbirth. Now there's no conceivable reason for Granger and Bancroft to stay married, so Quinn frames Granger for murder so that he'll be put back on death row, since he never liked the punk in the first place.

This is pretty hilarious on paper, and could have made for a juicy movie. But it mostly falls flat. It's mildly diverting, but it doesn't come near its potential given the out-there premise.

Peter Graves also stars as a journalist who has it in for Quinn and the hots for Bancroft.

Grade: B.