Posted on Thursday, 15 September 2011

THE STREET WITH NO NAME (Keighley, 1948) - I watched this mostly because I found out HOUSE OF BAMBOO was a re-make of it. The bare bones of the story are indeed the same (cop goes undercover with a criminal gang who have police sources, head gangster kills someone close to them because they suspect a leak, and finally tried to have the cop killed by the police), but otherwise they’re very different movies. There’s the setting (a fictional American city vs. Tokyo), which changes the mood completely, there’s b&w vs. color, academy ratio vs. CinemaScope, police procedural vs. drama, a gender change for a crucial character… Not to mention Widmark vs. Ryan, with very different takes on the main villain, borderline unhinged vs. deceptively congenial. Both films are worth seeing, though the edge, for me, goes to the more unusual and visually daring Fuller film - the formed just doesn’t have anything like the scene between Robert Ryan and “Griff”. 

THE STREET WITH NO NAME (Keighley, 1948) - I watched this mostly because I found out HOUSE OF BAMBOO was a re-make of it. The bare bones of the story are indeed the same (cop goes undercover with a criminal gang who have police sources, head gangster kills someone close to them because they suspect a leak, and finally tried to have the cop killed by the police), but otherwise they’re very different movies. There’s the setting (a fictional American city vs. Tokyo), which changes the mood completely, there’s b&w vs. color, academy ratio vs. CinemaScope, police procedural vs. drama, a gender change for a crucial character… Not to mention Widmark vs. Ryan, with very different takes on the main villain, borderline unhinged vs. deceptively congenial. Both films are worth seeing, though the edge, for me, goes to the more unusual and visually daring Fuller film - the formed just doesn’t have anything like the scene between Robert Ryan and “Griff”. 

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  1. notesonfilms posted this