Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Dead End (1937)

Director: William Wyler

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A muscle-bound Goldwyn production with an inflated reputation, interesting now chiefly in that, transposed virtually intact from the stage, it lets you see what the original Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's play must have been like; particularly fascinating is the composite set which makes a metaphor of the rich man's terraces overhanging the slums. The social thesis (deprived backgrounds may make criminals, but they can make good guys and padres too) is familiar from countless problem pictures of the period, and the Dead End Kids are about as menacingly streetwise as Shirley Temple in her naughtier moods. Cruising along like a well-oiled machine tended by an excellent cast, it remains highly watchable, even if the basic mawkishness - in evidence everywhere from the rhyming of Sidney's dewy-eyed good girl with Trevor's ravaged bad one, down to the fact that Bogart's gangster is risking his neck to see mom one more time (she slaps him and sends him packing, true, but that just adds to the pity of it all) - keeps sticking in the craw.

Author: TM

Time Out Film Guide


  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Different Strokes

Different Strokes

Chris Smith dips his toe into new waters in The Pool.

Street fighting men

BAM celebrates John Carpenter’s sci-fi-inflected rage against the machine.

Zoom in:

<em>They Live'</em>s Roddy Piper

The American experience

British comedian Steve Coogan gets in touch with his inner Yank in <em>Hamlet 2.</em>

Spanish intuition

Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall flirt away an Iberian summer in <em>Vicky Cristina Barcelona.</em>

Shadows and frogs

Crime pays in Film Forum’s expansive French noir series.

Strip tease

IFC’s new midnight-movie series revisits Hollywood’s groovy ’60s scene.

To air is human

<em>Man on Wire,</em> a new doc about a surreal Manhattan morning, aims high.