One of Borzage's silent masterpieces, Street Angel evokes the back streets of Naples and the lives of their denizens with exquisite, atmospheric photography. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell star in the story of a poor girl arrested for prostitution on the eve of her wedding to a vagrant artist. “Street Angel contains all the Borzage hallmarks: the holy whore syndrome, legal authority breaking up deliriously intense love relationships, the special world of lovers in the midst of squalor and a climax in which the hero, in a sexual frenzy, tries to strangle his love on a church altar beneath a painting of that same girl, depicted as the Virgin Mary” (National Film Theatre). “Borzage creates a feel for the bustle of city life and suggests its cruel indifference to individual misfortune. Like the man who...calmly continues to eat his dinner, ignoring Angela's awkward solicitation, the details in the environment construct a world of separate, unconnected characters...who share a common setting and atmosphere” (John Belton, The Hollywood Professionals).