-Devdutt Trivedi
Dead End (1937) marks William Wyler’s attempt at tackling the issue of class, setting New York as a background by basing his script on Sidney Kingsley’s play of the same name. The introductory subtexts and their backgrounds consisting of the famous New York skyline are quickly replaced by the ‘New Yorkese’ speaking urchins of East River.
The film revolves around the character of Babyfaced Martin played by Bogart in his first important role. Now an important member of the New York Underworld, Martin returns to the backdrop of his locality to show off his credentials as having made it big as an underworld don and show off his childish tricks often with an undercurrent of violence to the young urchins, who he believes, are eager to follow his footsteps.
Baby Face Martin and Dave (played by Joel McCrea) are quick to be involved in a rivalry between two social products of the same upbringing. Wyler sides with the character played by McCrea, arguably the weaker of the two and in this way fulfills being part of what Pauline Kael in her review of the film called ‘social consciousness of the thirties.’
Martin returns home only to realize that both he has rejected by both the women in his life, his mother, who is ashamed of his position and his girl, who didn’t wait for him after he left. The similarity between Martin’s relationships with the mother and the (ex) partner are reminiscent of James Cagney’s Oedipal villains that were emerging at the same time and would find their culmination in Raoul Walsh’s White Heat(1949).
Wyler himself gives ample proof of his recreation of the play with the efforts of producer Samuel Goldwyn of MGM:
In 1937 I filmed Sidney Kingsley's play Dead End, which dealt with kids growing up in the New York slums. I asked Sam Goldwyn if I could make the film on location in New York, because the background was so integral to the plot; but he said, "I'll build you a pier on the East River and some tenements right here on a Hollywood sound stage." Everyone marveled at the huge waterfront set, which was constructed as the principal setting for the film, but to me it looked very phony and artificial.
Although Wyler as stated in his quote above found the film set, designed by Richard Day, disappointing, critics disagreed with Wyler, praising the authentic qualities of the set. Several critics have cited Wyler’s symbolic visual style particularly with the leader of what came to the characters that would be called ‘The Dead End Kids’, Tommy, who is the most influenced by the father figure of Baby Face Martin. According to author Gene D. Philips, in the sequence where Tommy is framed alongside the staircase bars Wyler ‘implies that Tommy is already imprisoned by his wretched life in the cruel and indifferent world of the slums.’ In this way Wyler incorporates a very visual film elaboration relating meaning with frame composition, an approach which came out of the techniques of German Expressionism that would also influence the important Hollywood crime genre reflecting the American middle-class, Film Noir.
At the end of the film, Tommy is booked for attacking the rich boy with the knife, when the rich boy’s father, Mr. Griswald calls the police. Tommy is forced to take the help of his sister Drina, who is the most nomadic or deterretorialized in the Deleuzean sense, of all characters, uniting the disparate characters in the Day designed MGM set. Wyler denotes a transformation in Tommy with the death of Martin. He character empathies with the tough talking underdog Dave. Perhaps Wyler is equating the rich Griswald with a New York Underworld tycoon, making it amongst the only films that talk about reforming society for equality, instead of portraying crime, as in most Film Noirs set around the underworld as a result of jealousy that arose from unequal economic conditions with American capitalism as its backdrop.
Wyler while talking of adapting the play mentioned that he most wanted to make a faithful adaptation of the play. “My basic principle”, Wyler was quoted as saying in Philips’ remarkable text “was always to be faithful to the ideas and to the theme of the original author in order to transfer what the author was trying to say in their medium to my medium in the most effective way possible.”
The film received important critical acclaim for its lead actor including McCrea and Bogart. Perhaps the most important comment came from John T. McManus in a review that appeared in the New York Times in the issue of 25th August, 1937 which declared it as being amongst the most important motion pictures of 1937
Courtesy:
Exiles in Hollywood : Major European Film Directors in America, Gene D Phillips, Lehigh University Press,1998