Cinema: The New Pictures, Apr. 10, 1950

(2 of 2)

Sir Cedric Hardwicke gives a moving performance as the father who courts bankruptcy to redeem his son's honor, and Margaret Leighton matches it as the daughter who loses her stuffy fiance when the case plunges the family into notoriety. Neil North ably fills the title role. With the help of British dependables in lesser parts, the stars give the film a luster that shines only fleetingly in the script.

Side Street (MGM) returns Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, the law-breaking young lovers of They Live by Night, to the hazards of crime. This time Granger, a part-time letter carrier, tries to steal $200 in a weak moment. The haul turns out to be an embarrassing $30,000 in blackmail money, and somebody else's murder rap. While wife Cathy sticks loyally by, Granger steers an increasingly dangerous course between police and murderer.

Though the two young leading players act with too much emotional energy, Side Street mostly fulfills its modest melo dramatic intentions. Its climax, an auto mobile chase near the Manhattan water front and in the deserted financial district on a Sunday morning, is sharpened by exciting location shots from high overhead showing the cars darting through narrow skyscraper canyons. Sidney Boehm's straightaway script, if somewhat patly plotted, contains some authentic-sounding police talk. There are also solid minor per formances by Paul Kelly as a captain of detectives, James Craig as a thug and Jean Hagen as a Greenwich Village night club floozy.