DEAD END (1937)

Interesting, but dated social commentary piece set in a NYC tenement block located right outside of a luxury apartment building.  Why anybody with enough money to buy a luxury condo would want to have their balcony overlooking a ghetto filled with nonstop screaming and shooting, I have no idea but that's what happens here.  Anyway, down in the Depression-era 'hood you got a bunch of teenage boys who yell and holler 24/7.  These fuckers never shut up.  All day long they talk shit about people and about how their gonna beat the crap out of everybody.  Then you got the sad sack adults who walk around all day like zombies.  One scumbag woman even steals a cookie from a baby!  There's also unemployed Joel McCrea who has the hots for a rich girl and Sylvia Sidney who has the hots for Joel McCrea.  Entering into this heavy drama are hoodlums Humphrey Bogart and Allen Jenkins.  Bogie is wanted for multiple murders, but risks coming out in the open to see his mom and ex-girlfriend.  Things don't go as planned and further drama unfolds in da 'hood.

The story for DEAD END is okay and the acting is passable, but it's all so dated and cliche that there's really no power left in it.  It's an interesting watch, from a historical point of view and/or from the career perspective of the stars (I was really into the scenes between Bogart and Claire Trevor since I knew they would work together again in KEY LARGO), but if you don't have the time to spend you'd be better off watching something like I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG or even GRAND HOTEL.

On a positive note: the Dead End Kids weren't as annoying here as they were in ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES, there was a strong supporting cast (including Ward Bond, Marjorie Main, James Burke, Minor Watson, Charles Halton) and the set was very impressive.  Director William Wyler wanted to shoot the film on location in the slums of NYC, but Samuel Goldwyn said no and had set designer Richard Day recreate the waterfront location entirely on a sound stage.  Day ended up receiving a Oscar nomination for his work.

THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE (1936)

Way up in the mountains of Kentucky, the Falins and the Tollivers have been feudin' for so long nobody even remembers what for.  They just know they hate the hell out of each other and will shoot to kill on sight.  Jesus!  In the middle of this madness walks Fred MacMurray.  He works for the coal company and he wants to buy land from both the Tollivers and the Falins.  And while he's at it, he might just take a fancy to Henry Fonda's main squeeze...his own cousin!  Double Jesus!!

For 1936 I was really impressed by the colour photography.  Supposedly this was the first movie to use Technicolor for the outdoor sequences and they look great.  The story on the other hand...ehh, it was just alright.  The tension between the hillbilly Fonda and the city slicker MacMurray is pretty predictable and outside of just a few minor skirmishes, we never get to see the Falins and the Tollivers feudin' for really.  I wanted to see some straight up badass gunfights, but it never happened.  Also Fonda, even this early in his career, deserved better than playing some backwoods hick who hates sophisticated outsiders and their highfalutin book learning so much that he throws his young cousin's colouring book in the fireplace.  Even with such a one-dimensional character he still turns in a good performance.

One aspect that wasn't captured, would have been instead of Fonda wanting to marry his own cousin, is to have Fonda (before MacMurray shows up) having a secret courtship going with a Falin girl, but then when Fred shows up, he throws a monkey wrench in the works and stirring up the feud even more.  Just a thought.  Over an hundred years too late (the novel was written in 1908), but I think it would have liven things up a bit.  As it is though it's an alright classic Hollywood timewaster that's interesting thanks to early performances by MacMurray and Fonda.