Dead End

Best thing about this movie is Gregg Toland's cinematography. Worst thing about this movie is Humprey Bogart is playing a character called 'Baby Face.' I don't care if it's a gangster name, Bogart was born looking like a 55 year-old lifelong chain-smoker.

Kingsley's play, about highrises built next to a riverside slum, was true to life in Great-Depression NYC, and Wyler wanted to film it on location. Producer Sam Goldwyn refused because he thought movies should look prim and proper, and spent a small fortune building a set in Hollywood. Even so, upon visiting the set, Goldwyn complained that everything was dirty. Wyler said this is what a slum looks like. Goldwyn's response: This slum cost a lot of money and should look better than other slums.

Dead End was adapted from a stage play and it very much shows. The narrative is not especially well-suited for the screen, being very melodramatic and preachy despite its relatively good politics. There are some things to really like, namely Bogart and the fact that the whole movie takes place on one street and its side alleys.

Be warned this has a lot of child actors with 30s lower class accents, and that can get grating at times. But if you can get past that it's a really great class conscious picture about the way crime is inexorably linked with poverty. I don't know if the setting is realistic but it's a great way to provide a lot of perspectives and conflicts organically, and paralleling the kids with Bogart's top of the world gangster works really well.

This film has some good moments and some slow spots. The cast does good work ere, especially Bogart in a supporting role. Overall I would recommend this film.

Based on a hit Broadway play--and you feel it. And, as Pauline Kael wrote, it "has the ambiance of Broadway social consciousness of the 30s, which, like the beautifully engineered plot, is highly entertaining."(In other words, you hardly notice the preachiness.) Good cast--Marjorie Main's brief but heart-wrenching scene stands out--that marks the debut of the Dead End Kids, which became their own Hollywood franchise. The whole wealth vs. poverty clash is unexpectedly interesting and involving.

Disappointingly dull. The suspense doesn't work, and even though the child performers are better than expected, they have too much responsibility over the action that takes place. Bogie ain't good enough to keep this going, either. Plus points for the social commentary in the background.

Who'd be a cop?! I was reminded of my (admittedly limited) days teaching in a year 9 classroom when watching Tommy and his pals run riot (simultaneously annoying and endearing). I don't miss that! While there is a preachy tone that runs throughout the film and the sub-plot involving Dave and Kay is superfluous, the restriction of the story to one day and night in a very specific dead end street near the East River gives the film a highly contained and resolved feel which I find satisfying.

Barton Fink's fingerprints are all over this one.

"Dead End" is not a movie about gangsters. It's more about social inequity and poverty set in a stark urban environment.

Watched this film for a research project, it was fine, pretty boring unfortunately.

Bogart is great as the gangster come home. The "Dead End Kids" are fun to watch. I liked the ending. Some good came out of it all.

81.50

Thoroughly immersive tale with memorably colourful characters. The production design is enormously impressive - this New York street feels real and lived in. The Dead End Kids, Bogart and - very briefly - a touching Claire Trevor more than compensate for the rather bland McCrea and Sidney.

A solid, but somewhat forgettable precursor to the noirs of the forties.

A day of life in the gutter. More like a essay then a full-fletched action movie. Filled with atmosphere, social boundaries and raw human behavior where "The Dead End Kids" are the center of attention as the street kids, bullies and probable future gangsters. Dead End is a slow moving film that bubbles beneath the surface from the start. You get to know it's characters and why things happen the way they do. It's a highly effective work from William Wyler.

The excellent cinematography allowed me to ignore the annoyingly unintelligible rabble of street urchins that dominate this stagey gangster flick.

Good gangster picture that never shakes its stage origins.

A bit stagey, a bit didactic, and a bit melodramatic. The best parts all involve the neighborhood kids, who seem very natural; the worst involve the story of Joel McCrea, who admittedly doesn't have much to work with.

Not particularly smooth or compelling, and it's hampered by its stagey presence, but there are a couple of redeeming scenes. Sort of reminded me of Lean's "This Happy Breed".

Solid movie, with Bogart brilliant but under-used.