***Out In The Menacing 1950s Be-Bop Night- John Cassavetes’s “Crime In The Street”-Take Two

DVD Review

Crime In The Streets, starring John Cassavetes, James Whitmore, Sal Mineo, 1956

You know sometimes a still-life picture, let’s say Edward Hopper’s Nighthawkswith all the lonely customers beating out their own time, prancing through the existential night, waiting for daylight, or for something to break, or a song, let’s say Jerry Lee Lewis’ High School Confidentialthat “spoke” to our youthful teenage angst and alienations and our desire to jail-break out of the staid 1950s, or a film, let’s say some of the more engrossing parts of Rebel Without A Causewith James Dean exulting the confusions of his age, can tell us more about a particular cultural moment or phenomena than one hundred academic tomes going on and on. At some level the film Crime In The Streets speaks to that gradient of the 1950s where those on the edge of American society, the fellahin, the losers, came under a cinematic microscope and told the world, the world of the golden age American night, that not all boats were rising, not by a long shot.

With that thought in mind for those who are too young to remember or those who are older who have “forgotten”there was a menace, a serious menace, in American society in the 1950s that threatened the whole way of life and concerned young and old, rich and poor, no question. People seized up at the very mention of the idea and went screaming into some dreaded night at the thought. A few reached for their guns, others cowered in their backyard air raid shelters, or some other hidden place, hoping for the thing to pass. The “red scare” you say with all those secret agents, maybe your mommie, maybe she was a commie, turn her in, fast before those guys black grab you, you of all people because you did not do your duty, maybe others in high places and low, working 24/7/365 for “Uncle Joe” and his red commie empire?

Well, maybe but that is not the right answer here. Let’s try this -the gut-wrenching fear of every kid (and adult who worried about their kids), who had to hide under his or her desk in some weak-kneed and empty-headed attempt to fend off some coming atomic bomb blast? Although that meant almost every kid, every kid except the class wise guy who used the opportunity to show his bravado by not hiding under that desk that is not the right answer. Close, but no cigar. No, the thing that drove terror into the hearts of every self-respecting and well-meaning citizen, and even those who were not, those who were doing their own nefarious actions, doing an occasional midnight crawl, was the invasion of … the juvenile delinquent (JD).

Yes, JDs, usually shiftless young men, teenagers really, from the lower depths, corner boys, you saw them, you know you did. Saw them and walked to the other side of the street, head down hoping against hope that you were not the next target, that you would make it home for supper in one piece and with your dough intact. Saw them, white tee-shirt, jeans, complete with chain hanging out of the back pocket, held up by wide balck belts ready to serve rumble duty if necessary, engineer boots the order of the day, cigarette, unfiltered, perched at the corner of the mouth, hanging around Harry’s Pool Hall, Ma’s Variety Store, or Doc’s Drugstore, hanging of the red brick wall, posed one foot against the wall, defying gravity and anybody to try to take that foot off that wall. Yeah, I thought you would remember. And their hanger-on, frankly, slutty girlfriends with tight blouses and skirts, boffed hair, heavy mascara, chewing gun, Wrigley’s, hands on swaying hips that you might have minute sweaty dreamed about when you had your own girl troubles (although the girlfriends were not as feared, not nearly as feared for obviously 1950s male-dominated society reasons).

If you came from low-rent, dead-end, dredges public housing, “the projects,” of unblessed memory, as I did, or from the urban slums as portrayed in the film under review, a classic of this mid-1950s genre then the social snubs still smart. The ways this was done from the upper crust, hell, even the rising golden age of America middle classes who were closing their own humble beginnings doors behind them, consciously if amateurishly could constitute its own sketch here, as the immoral, illegal, and threatening male teenager with time on his hands, a chip on his shoulder and no dough and no way to make dough was a lot more pressing that some hyped-up red scare or silly atomic bomb explosion.

And as the plot line unfolds here in the small back streets world those great world-shaking problems don’t even enter the horizon. Life close to the bone, angst-filled and alienation-flooded just swamped all other worldly considerations. Especially for wayward kids. This film opens with a classic “rumble,” over turf naturally, between two rival street gangs. After that “audience fright” as a way to get the juices flowing the rest of the film is a study in whatever sociological notions were floating at the time to identify, descript, and put a Band-Aid on the JD problem.

Frank, sensitive but totally alienated Frank (played by a very young John Cassavetes), is trying to find his place in his small world of the slums but people won’t let him alone. Especially one old goat of a man (a bowler, an avid bowler, no less so you know his is nothing but a bad hombre to mess with), who snitches to the coppers on one of Frank’s boys, and is set up to take the fall- the deep-end fall so Frankie can feel better about himself. Aided by two fellow gang members he decides to alleviate his bad feelings by a small off-hand murder of this guy, this bad hombre bowler, right in the neighborhood. One of Frank’s confederates turns out to be Baby (played by Sal Mineo made famous as a JD movie character in Rebel Without A Cause) and another played by Mark Rydell who seems to be a pyscho (or at least seriously anti-social).

Enter one settlement house social worker (this was the uptown swells’, 1950s version, notion of how to get these JDs back into society and away from dangerous weapons) played by James Whitmore who keeps prodding on Frankie’s conscious and his “inner” suburban youth. Naturally since a central motif of all crime noirs, JDs or hardened criminals, is that crime doesn’t pay old Frankie is made in his own way and in his own time to see the light. And to take responsibility for his actions. I think based on this plot I would have preferred to be just another punk JD down in “the projects” than go that route. But nobody asked me. So there.