Having made a momentous directorial debut in 1929 with Applause, Rouben Mamoulian turned to this Dashiell Hammett original screenplay to create what remains one of the rare classics of the gangster film. Lacking certain conventions of the genre (the pugilistic hero, the bullet-ridden city), it is rather a stylized story of love against all societal odds, along the lines of Fritz Lang's later You Only Live Once. Sylvia Sidney in fact launched her career here as Nan, in love with a carnival worker called “The Kid” (Gary Cooper). She urges him to go into the family business--racketeering--but she winds up taking the rap. Filmed with Mamoulian's characteristically mobile camerawork, skillfully chosen location shooting and symbolic imagery, City Streets also expands on Applause in its avant-garde use of the relatively new medium of sound (including an early use of overlapping dialogue).
“Typically rough and tough in the Hammett style, the film stands alone in the 1930s as the arty attempt to dignify the gangster genre...” (Parish & Pitts, “The Great Gangster Pictures”).