**Back Street

Back Street

Three factors stand in the way of any appreciation of John M. Stahl. First, there is the fact that so many of his films are relatively unavailable. A contemporary of D.W. Griffith, his first 15 years as a filmmaker in the silent era – amounting to some 23 films, nearly half of his career – lack any sort of home video release and are thus, at present, impossible to see outside of the rare screening. Then there is the fact that Stahl seems, on the basis of what *is *more readily available, to have made his best work in the period just after the transition to sound, in the years between 1931-19351 – a period largely overlooked in film history, leading to the neglect of many key talents. Moreover, the often-provocative subject matter of these films, including *Back Street *(1932), led to their removal from circulation not long after the Hollywood Production Code began to be enforced in 1934. Add to this the fact that more than one of Stahl’s films from these years have been overshadowed by later remakes. Of the two great American adaptations of Stefan Zweig’s novella Letter From an Unknown Woman, the 1948 version directed by Austrian émigré Max Ophuls is far better known than Stahl’s *Only Yesterday *(1933). Another two of his films, *Imitation of Life *(1934) and *Magnificent Obsession *(1935), are dwarfed in their reputation by Douglas Sirk’s remakes of the same name in the 1950s.2

All of the above hinder the layman’s effort to evaluate Stahl’s place in classical Hollywood. Yet I find that, with each new film I encounter, I feel more confident in making the case for his greatness. Back Street is as good as any film to demonstrate Stahl’s talent – for instance, his gift for moving the camera. One of the most pernicious myths in film history is the notion that the introduction of sound prevented filmmakers from moving the camera in interesting ways, limiting them to static camera setups. So it may be surprising that, on the contrary, *Back Street *begins by sweeping us into the scene of turn-of-the-century Cincinnati with a dramatic pan, carrying us from table to table through the bar where Irene Dunne – appearing here in one of her first leading roles – drinks and dances with men of ill-intention. Or one might consider the sensitive way the camera tracks Dunne and John Boles as they meet at the train station for the first time, holding the take as they cross the platform. Andrew Sarris once wrote of Stahl’s films that they conveyed “a profound comprehension of the emotional implication of two-shots as opposed to cross-cutting.”3 Like any great director of melodrama, Stahl understands what one gains from letting a shot linger, waiting for just the right moment to cut in on a reaction.

No doubt, Stahl was able to be as expressive with the camera thanks to the film’s cinematographer, Karl Freund, who expanded the possibilities of the moving camera some years earlier as the cameraman on F.W. Murnau’s *The Last Laugh *(1924). On the other hand, one senses an element of restraint in Stahl’s approach. He is not, like contemporaries such as Ernst Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian, or Lewis Milestone, a particularly showy filmmaker. One does not necessarily come away from his films dazzled the way one does exiting *Trouble in Paradise *(Lubitsch, 1932), *Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde *(Mamoulian, 1931), or *All Quiet on the Western Front *(Milestone, 1930). Stahl is much more discreet in his handling of scenes. One might praise in his work what André Bazin once praised in the films of William Wyler,4 namely a kind of objectivity to his cinematic écriture that nearly seems to dissolve, at times, into documentary.

*Back Street *is especially remembered for Irene Dunne’s role. Those who know her as a glamorous comedienne in screwballs like *Theodora Goes Wild *(Richard Boleslawski, 1936) or *The Awful Truth *(Leo McCarey, 1937) may be surprised to see her in a dramatic role as the ‘other woman’. But the film is also an opportunity to speak about John Boles, an actor so unusually soft-spoken that he could really only be successful in this moment in film history. If he is best remembered for his role as the friend of Dr. Frankenstein in James Whale’s 1931 horror film, it is only because *Back Street *and *Only Yesterday *remain so little-known today. In Frankenstein, Boles is easy to forget among many more personable characters. He is far easier to admire under Stahl’s direction, where his quiet affect is more useful to the film’s intentions.

Sound film, wrote Robert Bresson, invented silence.5 Most filmmakers confronted the transition to sound filmmaking by trying to find ways to cover up the awkwardness of silence, a problem eventually resolved through incidental music. Stahl is unique in seeing to a far greater degree than his peers the creative potential, especially for melodrama, in selective use of silence. Could anything be more crushing than Boles’ confession of infidelity to his son, sitting stone-faced in anger; or the pause over the phone at the film’s finale, the last in a series of absences punctuating the whole narrative?

Back Street (1932 USA 93 mins)

Prod Co: Universal Pictures Prod: Carl Laemmle Jr. Dir: John M. Stahl Scr: Gladys Lehman, Lynn Starling Phot: Karl Freund Ed: Milton Carruth Mus: James Dietrich Art Dir: Charles D. Hall Cos Des: Vera West

Cast: Irene Dunne, John Boles, George Meeker, ZaSu Pitts, June Clyde, William Bakewell, Arletta Duncan, Shirley Grey, Doris Lloyd, Paul Weigel, Jane Darwell, James Donlan, Walter Catlett, Robert McWade

Endnotes

1. By far Stahl’s best known film is the 1945 noir *Leave Her to Heaven. *But I agree with the critic Miguel Marías that this film is quite unrepresentative of Stahl’s usual style, to say the least. See Marías, “The Unknown Mr. Stahl” in John M. Stahl (Filmoteca Española, 1999), pp. 15-28. ↩
2. In fact, Sirk directed a third, indirect remake of another of Stahl’s films when he adapted *Interlude *(1957) from the same James M. Cain story as the latter’s When Tomorrow Comes (1939). ↩
3. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1985), p. 140. ↩
4. André Bazin, “William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing” in Bazin at Work: Major Essays & Reviews From the Forties and Fifties, Bert Bardullo, ed. (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 1-22. ↩
5. Robert Bresson, *Notes on the Cinematograph, *trans. Jonathan Griffin (New York: New York Review Books, 1986), p. 28. ↩