Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply A Masterpiece

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

If you've never seen an Anthony Quinn movie, The Naked Street is the perfect one to start with. He's handsome, angry, warm, loyal, frightening, and passionate. He plays the powerful gangster brother to Anne Bancroft, and when she gets herself in the family way, he takes matters into his own hands. . .My mother and I aren't the only people in the world who thought Anthony Quinn should have played the title character in The Godfather; later in his career he continually played Italian mob bosses, as if to make it up to his fans who were disappointed in Marlon Brando's ridiculous performance. The Naked Street is what started it all. Tony is so perfectly Italian, it's hard to believe he actually wasn't! To my fellow Italians out there, what would you do if your younger sister got herself in trouble by a no-good criminal? Plan to bust him out of jail, of course! The real punishment would be to force him to marry her-and what Catholic wouldn't want a legitimate baby from his sister?The Naked Street is intense and gritty, for the time it was made. Film noir fans will find a gem in this largely forgotten film. Anthony Quinn gives a great performance and sufficiently scares the pants off of Farley Granger, as well as the audience! A young Anne Bancroft balances out her need for rescue with the rebellious streak that got her into the mess in the first place. For a great noir weekend, rent The Naked Street and Pickup on South Street.

I had to really think things through in listening to an almost unrecognizable Peter Graves narrate this crime saga of a punk and a mobster tied together through fate and both on opposite sides of the law in spite of an obvious detestment of each other. Solid performances by all four leads (Anthony Quinn as a powerful racketeer, Farley Granger as a death row inmate, Anne Bancroft as Quinn's tough sister impregnated by Granger, as well as the aforementioned Graves) guide the story of Quinn's decision o get Granger's conviction for murder overturned so he can marry Bancroft. But these two amoral men are doomed to be in conflict, and it is Graves' job to expose both of their corruptions.The narration, quite weakly presented, seems so immaturely written in spite of the adult situations. By 1955, this type of structure was almost a cliché for film noir, and while it may have worked had it been written better, it could have been even better totally without it. There's a lot of cleverness to be found, but certain incidents in the film have no real point in being there, such as a murder discovered at the beginning and the discovery of a body in the east river towards the end of the film. Quinn has a floozy mistress that simply disappears from the film, and Granger's hijacking of the truck he drives for Quinn is barely dealt with, either. Bancroft is one of those actresses that shines in everything even though at this time Hollywood producers didn't see her as anything more than a typical stock player.You pretty much figure out how the film will play out in a key scene halfway through the film, and the conclusion totally forgets about wrapping up what has happened to Granger at that point, which was the major plot of the last quarter. This ends up being a grievous error on the part of all involved in the film's continuity, forgotten without any after thought by the director, writer and ultimately the editor.

The Naked Street (1955) *** (out of 4)Gangster Phil Regal (Anthony Quinn) finds out that his younger sister Rosalie (Anne Bancroft) is pregnant by criminal Nicky Bradna (Farley Granger) who just happens to be at Sing Sing and on death row. Regal manages to scare the witnesses who change their testimony and Nicky is released but soon the gangster regrets what he did. THE NAKED STREET seems to have mostly negative reviews and while I can admit that the film has some major flaws, the cast is simply so great that it's impossible not to get caught up in everything going on and in the end I really enjoyed the picture. There's no question that the story itself is pretty far-fetched in the way the gangster is able to pull a man off death row and it's even more far-fetched when you come to the climax of everything. I won't spoil what happens but the logic behind it is set at a zero. Another problem is that the sister character was really poorly written and her dumbness really gets annoying after a while. I mean, her brother is a big time gangster yet she never realized how he gave her everything with having a "real" job? The morals of her character also goes back and forth as the film moves along, which is another problem. Outside of those things I thought the film was entertaining. Quinn is wonderful as the tough gangster who isn't afraid to push people around to get what he wants. For 1955 his performance is pretty raw and rough and it really reminded me of the stuff we used to see from the pre-code Warner gangster pics of the early 1930s. Granger is also very believable as the lover boy who simply got caught up in a bad crime. Even though her character is weak, Bancroft at least delivers a fine performance as does Peter Graves who plays a reporter. I also really liked how the Quinn character worries about his sister being pregnant, unmarried and what this would make her look like. The moral worries of a gangster was an interesting touch and it's handled in a rather raw fashion, which certainly wasn't normal for this era. THE NAKED STREET has some issues but for the most part it's worth watching.

The Naked Street (1955)A hidden gem. It's too straight forward to be some kind of memorable classic, and it has too many of the earmarks of many movies that came earlier to be original in any way. But this is a really well made, slightly lower budget, crime and romance film with a great cast. Anthony Quinn in particular shows several sides to his personality as a nice big brother who is also controlling and blind to his little sister, a full grown Ann Bancroft, who is radiant in the working class apartment she lives in with her mother. And Farley Granger is a good echo of the slightly idealistic but misled innocent he played in "Strangers on a Train," though here he is not so innocent.Expect a fast progression, some good solid filming, and acting that holds its own. The director, Maxwell Shane, is really more of a screenwriter, and so it figures the writing here is pretty good (he co-wrote, too). He has only a handful of other films he directed in this period, all reasonably good (the first, "Fear in the Night," the most forgettable, and the best, "The Glass Wall" stars Gloria Grahame), and all fairly formula stuff. This one rises up because of its tight construction and good, very good, acting. Give it a chance.