Street Scene
Sylvia Sidney, Beulah Bondi and Estelle Taylor are featured in this realistic drama of New York tenement dwellers. With sets by Richard Day (Dead End) and photography by George Barnes (Rebecca, etc.), King Vidor turned Elmer Rice's play into a fascinating cinematic exercise. Fred Camper writes:
“(Vidor) respects the integrity of the play's original set, largely confining his shooting to it. His innovation was in filming that set - the exterior of a New York tenement - with a bewildering variety of different camera angles and camera movements.... The result is extraordinary, and the film's effects go beyond the obvious values of visual variety.... Vidor infuses his subjects with enormous energy, an energy quite appropriate to the distinctness of the play's individuals - and of New York's....” --Soho Weekly News, 1976