Adapted from the Broadway stage play, Wyler's film is set on New York's East Side. Bogart plays Baby Face Martin, a gangster who returns to his home to visit his mother one last time. He's in for a wake-up. His mother denounces him as a murderer and his childhood sweetheart is on the streets.
Slowly but surely, all the most celebrated movies of the golden age of crime thrillers are making their way onto the DVD medium, usually in transfers as impressive as ... more >
Slowly but surely, all the most celebrated movies of the golden age of crime thrillers are making their way onto the DVD medium, usually in transfers as impressive as this. Set in the crime-ridden slums of depression era New York, Dead End is markedly different from the Warners product of the day, with William Wyler's concerns being more of in the line of social criticism of Warshow's essay The Gangster as Tragic Hero. Humphrey Bogart, of course, gives his memorable turned as notorious gangster Babyface Martin, returning to the lower east side and acting as malign influence on the dead-end kid brother of Sylvia Sydney, who's looking for a better life. If the intervention of architect Joel McRae renders things a touch schematic in the good-versus-evil stakes, most people will be prepared to overlook this, as Wyler's famous movie still exerts a considerable grip. < less
