The Naked Street (1955)

Very well executed

Nice effects though.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

If you've never seen an Anthony Quinn movie, The Naked Street is the perfect one to start with. He's handsome, angry, warm, loyal, frightening, and passionate. He plays the powerful gangster brother to Anne Bancroft, and when she gets herself in the family way, he takes matters into his own hands. . .My mother and I aren't the only people in the world who thought Anthony Quinn should have played the title character in The Godfather; later in his career he continually played Italian mob bosses, as if to make it up to his fans who were disappointed in Marlon Brando's ridiculous performance. The Naked Street is what started it all. Tony is so perfectly Italian, it's hard to believe he actually wasn't! To my fellow Italians out there, what would you do if your younger sister got herself in trouble by a no-good criminal? Plan to bust him out of jail, of course! The real punishment would be to force him to marry her-and what Catholic wouldn't want a legitimate baby from his sister?The Naked Street is intense and gritty, for the time it was made. Film noir fans will find a gem in this largely forgotten film. Anthony Quinn gives a great performance and sufficiently scares the pants off of Farley Granger, as well as the audience! A young Anne Bancroft balances out her need for rescue with the rebellious streak that got her into the mess in the first place. For a great noir weekend, rent The Naked Street and Pickup on South Street.

The Naked Street is narrated in flashback from the point of view of investigative reporter Peter Graves who gets both the story and the girl in the end. The story is that of Anthony Quinn one tough and ruthless gangster who like Paul Muni in Scarface is slightly overprotective of his sister. The sister is Anne Bancroft and she's gotten herself knocked up.The doer is Farley Granger a local punk who is now on death row for killing someone. Quinn who has striven mightily to keep his gangster life away from his sister goes to some extraordinary and illegal lengths to get Granger sprung. But once the shotgun wedding has been concluded he treats Granger the way Sonny Corleone treated Carlo Rizzi his new brother-in-law. Granger actually tries at one point to go straight, but Quinn just hates him with a passion. It ends bad for both Quinn and Granger.Anthony Quinn who in his career was one of those chameleon like players who could do just about anything is dominant in the story in whatever scene he's in. The hatred of Quinn for Granger is what drives the whole story.As for Granger he recycled the part he did in Edge Of Doom where he plays the killer of a priest and another priest Dana Andrews brings him to accountability. It's like the fates were truly against him and due to Quinn's machinations comes to a truly ironic ending.Others to note are James Flavin as a noted criminal defense attorney who Quinn hires for Granger and Lee Van Cleef who is unbilled and who becomes an unwitting pawn in Quinn's plans for Granger. Bancroft is showing a bit of acting chops herself, there's a glimmer of the talent that got her that Oscar for The Miracle Worker.The Naked Street didn't have any great production design touches, but the talented cast keeps you interested.

The acting makes the movie, especially gang boss Regal (Quinn) and his naive sister Rosalie (Bancroft). Regal may be a ruthless racketeer outside his family, but inside, he's a protective pussycat. That is, until cheap Lothario Bradna (Granger) first knocks-up Rosalie and then philanders after Regal forces him to marry her. And that's after Regal gets him off a murder-one rap so the irresponsible kid can do the right thing. Now, feeling betrayed, Regal's really angry, so we know Bradna's in for even worse trouble. The movie's got some twists and turns, not all being very plausible. But that's okay because Quinn delivers a scary and riveting performance. The actor's just back from Italy where he starred in the powerful classic La Strada (1954). So maybe he was trying to show Hollywood a thing or two since he delivers a lot more than the role requires. Then there's Bancroft, already a magnetic personality, and on her way to an Oscar-studded career. Looks to me like the producers spent their money on the cast and not on the visuals that are pretty bland and bare-bones. But then the supporting cast is full of familiar faces, especially up-and-comers like Van Cleef and Graves, along with great vets like Bissell and Flavin.Five-years earlier and I expect the film would have been straight noir, without the moralizing voice-over. But this is the McCarthy Cold War period, so there can't be any lingering ambiguity. Still, it's a fairly gritty little film with a compelling central performance that deserves better than near- total Hollywood obscurity, despite the titillating title.

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?