Children on the streets
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Children on the streets |
| Original title | Wild Boys of the Road |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1933 |
| length | 67 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | William A. Wellman |
| script | Earl Baldwin |
| production |
Robert Presnell Sr. for Warner Brothers and First National |
| camera | Arthur L. Todd |
| cut | Thomas Pratt |
| occupation | |
| |
Children in the streets is a 1933 American youth drama directed by William A. Wellman .
action
The teenagers who are friends, Tommy and Eddie, want to leave high school to support their parents during the Great Depression. Eddie asks his father about a job, but learns that he has just been fired. He even sells his beloved car to help his parents, but his father cannot find a new job even after months. When the Smith family finally gets into debt, they are threatened with eviction. Tommy and Eddie decide to leave their families of their own accord in order not to be a further financial burden for them.
The youngsters secretly drive away in a freight train, where they meet Sally, who has also run away from her family and who joins them. It quickly becomes clear that Tommy and Eddie are not isolated, they meet more and more young people who live on the street. In Chicago, the freight train carrying the youths is intercepted by the police, who take most of the youth into custody. Sally, however, has a letter from her aunt, who lives in Chicago and could take her in. She introduces the cops Eddie and Tommy as her cousins, who are therefore not locked away by the police either.
Sally's aunt Carrie - who runs a well-running but illegal brothel in her apartment - takes the young people into her apartment. They don't even get to eat, however, as Carrie's apartment is stormed by the police. The youth flee and travel on towards Cleveland . Near Cleveland, the young Lola is raped by a railroad worker. The youth learn of the rape and knock down the worker, who accidentally falls off the train and dies. During their escape at Cleveland train station, Tommy is also knocked down on the rails by a railway switch and the train hits him. Although he survived, his leg was amputated by a doctor. Since they cannot afford a prosthesis , Tommy has to walk with a crutch from now on. Hundreds of young people set up a makeshift street children camp in Columbus , but the city soon banned it and closed it.
Eddie, Tommy and Sally end up living in a garbage dump in New York . Eddie gets a job as an elevator boy, but he lacks three dollars for a coat that he has to wear to work. Two men promise Eddie five dollars if he brings a letter to the cinema. However, the letter turns out to be a threat of a robbery and Eddie is arrested. Tommy and Sally protest against the arrest, which is why they are also taken into custody. They are initially silent towards the judge and give no information about their origins before Eddie speaks bitterly about the situation of him and other young people. The judge is impressed and moved by Eddie's speech. He promises to get Eddie back at his job and drop the charges. He also plans to reunite the youngsters with their parents.
background
The film was made at the height of the American economic crisis. Back then, the Warner Brothers studios were known for their socially critical and quite tough films that addressed current problems in the form of melodramas or gangster films. William A. Wellman's Boys of the Road can also be classified in this series , who, due to the pre-code era at the time, can also openly address explosive topics such as rape and juvenile delinquency.
Director Wellman also found his personal happiness on the film set: The three times divorced film director began a relationship with Dorothy Coonan (1913–2009), the then 19-year-old actress of Sally. They married in 1934, had seven children, and remained married until Wellman's death in 1975.
Reviews
“The film is a fine example of how Warner Bros. Studios handled social issues in a hands-on manner in the 1930s, during the Great Depression and the social reformist“ New Deal ”. If director William A. Wellman registers and describes this terrible life, the film is as strong today as it was in the year it was made and a blow to any false optimism. "
“The film shines brightly on the impoverishment of young people who wandered around the country by the hundreds at the end of the 1920s. The humorous and tragic episodes not only express bitter doubts about the American social structure, but also confidence and self-assertion. The film is still infectiously fresh, sincere and unconventional. "
"The underrated William A. Wellman made many neglected classics during the Great Despression, and this 1933 feature film is one of the very best (...) Powerful stuff."
Awards
In 2013 the film was included in the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Web links
- Children on the streets in the Internet Movie Database (English)