On Blu-ray - David Hare welcomes a no-frills edition of CITY STREETS (Rouben Mamoulian, USA, 1931)

The Kid and Nan (Coop and Sylvia Sidney, above) photographed by the king of closeups, Lee Garmes, in Mamoulian's terrific Dashiell Hammett adaptation from 1931, City Streets. New Blu-ray from French label Rimini.

The movie is one of my two or three favorite Mamoulians, along with Queen Christina and Applause. Material, cast and production blend for a perfect entertainment. Others, notably Adrian Danks, have argued strenuously for Mamoulian as a major auteur, but I pass on that score, having long ago accepted the Sarris dictum that Mamou was ultimately a "follower" rather than an innovator. 

With this early crime picture, however the genre itself was an evolving one, and Mamoulian's tight little movie, thanks largely to Hammett's brisk narrative, is a definite genre buster. I think his 1933 Queen Christina is also the equal of Cukor's supreme Camille within the Garbo canon. 

If for no other reason I love Christina for the completely open way it depicts both Garbo's and the historical character's lesbianism. His direction of her and that material is so clean and expressive it manages to completely dodge any bullets from the production Code who were perhaps too astonished to believe what they were seeing.

Sylvia Sidney, City Streets

This new disc of City Streets is from - I am guessing - a very good master prepared by Universal which must have been the source for a decade old plus bootleg which was doing the backchannels, until the ineffable Universal Vault series of burnt-on-demand (VOD) came up three years ago now with this title in the same tranche as other treasures, like Sternberg’s An American Tragedy, both in captures from near pristine print sources. Rimini is at best a cheapo outfit in France, and their transfers make even the Elephant label's licensing deals from Universal look ritzy in comparison. 

This transfer is as clean as a pin and has beautiful tonal values, but it's rather "soft" and clearly not a new restoration. For one thing the AR mask is 1.37, which is cropped in from what was the original pre-1932 talkie AR of 1.19. That ratio stuck until Hollywood and German engineers worked out by 1932 how to squeeze the soundtrack onto the 35mm strip, as well as slightly shrink the exposed film aperture to 1.37, close as they could make it back to the original silent film ratio of 1.33. 

The title would benefit greatly from a remaster, while things like grading and stabilization, which can be expensive, require no further attention. The disc up-rezzes quite spectacularly on a 4K projection display, but the original vault master is badly overdue for a 4K preservation scan.