(Street without a Name)
France, 1934, 82 min (now 78 min), b&w
Dir Pierre Chenal; Asst dir Roger Blin and Louis Daquin; Prod Les Productions Pellegrin; Scr Chenal, Blin, and Marcel Aymé, from the novel by Aymé; Cinematog Joseph-Louis Mundwiller; Music Paul Devred; Art dir Roland Quignon; Sound Jacques Hawadier and A. Puff; Edit Chenal; Act Constant Rémy (Méhoul), Gabriel Gabrio (Finocle), Paul Azaïs (Manu), Enrico Glori (Cruséo), Pola Illéry (Noâ), Dagmar Gérard (La Jimbre), Fréhel (Madame Méhoul), Paule Andral (Louise Johannieu), Robert Le Vigan (Vanoël), Marcel Delaitre (Johannieu), and Pierre Larquey.
This is a typical instance of “the street film,” a subgenre inherited from the German cinema of the 1920s (e.g., Karl Grune, The Street, 1923; Georg-Wilhelm Pabst, The Joyless Street, 1925; Bruno Rahn, Tragedy of the Street, 1927).25 It was to flourish in 1930s France, and the titles of surviving films are indicative of the genre’s focus on harsh street life in the poorer quarters of Paris: Faubourg Montmartre (1931); Dans les rues/On the Street (1933); La Rue sans nom (1933); Jeunesse/Youth (1934); Ménilmontant (1936); La Rue sans joie/The Joyless Street (1938); and L’Enfer des anges/A Hell for Little Angels (1939). Typically this genre exploited the standard melodramatic conventions of such films as Les Misérables and Les Deux Orphelines but combined them with a raw realism often labeled “naturalism.” The teeming, seething squalor of “the street” rendered all too credible the inevitable corruption of innocent youth that was often a central theme, and aimed to evoke not pity for the vulnerable poor, as in melodramas, but rather a sort of fascinated horror.
Marcel Aymé had published the book on which the film is based in 1931. Pierre Chenal, who had just established his credentials as a director with a first forgettable film, recounts his haste to buy the rights and consult with Aymé on the screenplay.26 He was delighted when he found an authentically awful alleyway near the Porte de Clichy, in the 17th arrondissement, where he could film it, and which indeed had no apparent name—and no footpaths, just a channel down the middle to drain away the filth chucked from the windows that opened onto it.
In the film, Méhoul, who lives there in disgruntled discontent with his family, is disturbed by the arrival of an old mate, Finocle, who recalls a criminal past and prison years that Méhoul would rather forget; murder and betrayal are both on the cards. Moreover, Finocle brings with him his daughter, Noâ, who generates violent sexual eddies wherever she goes. One of the more honorable lads of the quarter, Cruséo, falls for her, but she is seduced or raped by Méhoul’s son on the kitchen table (seduction and rape being here almost indistinguishable). Paralleling all this interpersonal violence, the whole quarter is due for demolition, to the anger and dismay of its residents. Then a neighbor’s boy dies of the fever, and Noâ catches it too. Finally, Méhoul and Finocle get carted off to prison, hands clasped in a final reconciliation (“mates” after all), leaving Cruséo to look after Noâ.
Violence, treachery, and malice are all seen as interlinked and due to the grinding poverty that prevails. None of this is aestheticized or prettified: the only saving grace of workers and criminals is, as usual, music. Cruséo plays the accordion and sings a sad love song, while Madame Méhoul is played by that greatest of exponents of the chanson réaliste, Fréhel (who also appears in Cœur de lilas, La Rue sans joie, and L’Enfer des anges, but is best remembered for her appearance in Pépé le Moko, #56). Here, music offers the most oblique of escapes from daily violence, but there is a telling moment in the (gratuitously digressive) incident of the young lad’s death when Méhoul attempts to distract him by stories of the foreign lands he has seen, promising to take the lad there when he is better. These evocations of escape to a better land “over there,” so frequent in 1930s films, are the more moving the more awful the daily existence of the characters. Nature, of course, is the most common form of escape, and not just in these street films: in Faubourg Montmartre, a wonderfully effete poet rescues the victimized girl and takes her to the provinces; in Dans les rues, the only tender moment occurs during a stroll by the river; in the relentlessly glum Jeunesse, the unemployed man fantasizes about leaving for a new life in the colonies, but when he actually does so, his pregnant girlfriend tries to commit suicide. Even when he finally invites her to follow, she sinks back glumly, uncertain, leaving the ending inconclusive. In Ménilmontant, a group of workers find a valuable ring and return it to its rightful owner. She is amazed by their honesty and, like the rich bourgeoisie in La Maternelle (#26), is astounded to hear of the condition of poor children in Ménilmontant. She will fund the group to construct a “boys’ town.” But the project is appropriated by pompous administrators, the workers shouldered aside, their shacks bulldozed to make way for the boys’ town, and old Chenille, the initiator of the project, dies agonizingly. “It’s inhuman,” says one. “Do you really expect people who are well off to be human,” says the other. Cynicism prevails, especially about the wealthy.
Perhaps surprisingly, all of these street films did well on release, achieving around 300,000 spectators in Paris. In most cases, this was not due to the initial (exclusive) release in up-market cinemas but to general release in the suburbs. The one exception is the last of the street films, L’Enfer des anges, which attracted over 750,000 spectators on release in 1941 and was enormously popular both in exclusive and in general release. But it has to be remembered that few films were being made or released at that time, and occupied Paris had no other sources of entertainment. Nearly all films did exceptionally well during the war. Nevertheless, it was the second most popular film of the 1940–1941 season, and far from standard escapist fare. La Rue sans nom itself was well received by both audiences and critics when released in January 1934, and established Chenal as one of the most promising young directors of the time. The reviewer for La Cinématographie française spoke of a film “oozing poetic intensity,” while describing it as no film for adolescents or families.27 Michel Gorel’s review of the film in Cinémonde also spoke of a poetic film—indeed a poetic realist film—revealing
a world where the sun rarely shines, blotted out by squalor, gut-rot and boredom, by the lugubrious wail of the factory siren. . . . I spoke of “realism” but I also called it “poetic.” Because even when dealing with this harsh brutal subject matter Chenal does not forsake poetry. And the finest scenes in the films are perhaps those in which characters, worn down little by little, like the stones of their hovels, strive to escape, some through love, others through wine, adventure, revolt, or again . . . by constructing elaborate fantasy worlds.28
25. See Mast, A Short History of the Movies, 174, for a concise account of these films.
26. Chenal, Souvenirs du cinéaste, 9–10, 49–58.
27. La Cinématographie française, 6 January, 21 April 1934.
28. Cinémonde, October 1933.