Street Angel
Directed by Frank Borzage
Philip Klein and Henry Robert Symonds from a play by Monkton Hoffe
1928/US
Fox Film Corporation
IMDb page
First viewing/YouTube (free)
Title Card: Everywhere… in every town, in every street… we pass, unknowingly, human souls made great by love and adversity.
Another beautiful romance from Frank Borzage and company.
The story takes place in Naples, Italy. Angela (Janet Gaynor) has grown up tough on the streets but hides a beautiful soul within. She desperately needs money to buy medicine for her dying mother. Her only quick route to this is crime. So she attempts to sell her body and when she is unsuccessful she turns to attempted theft. She is apprehended and sentenced to a year in jail. She escapes and is hidden by a traveling circus.
There she meets poverty-stricken painter Gino (Charles Farrell). They start out as painter and model but soon are madly in love. Gino needs to move to Naples to seek a better lot in life. Angela accompanies him despite the danger she will be picked up by the police and the fact that Gino knows nothing of her past.
In Naples, things start looking up when Charles sells Angela’s portrait (looking like the Madonna) and receives a major commission to paint a mural. Can their love survive Angela’s rearrest?
This one didn’t make me cry like Seventh Heaven but it is certainly worth watching even if only for the visuals. The acting is great too and makes the story line go down quite easily.
Janet Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for her performances in this, Seventh Heaven (1927) and Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans (1927). The film was nominated in the categories of Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.
