The City Across the River (1949) Dir: Maxwell Shane
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City Across the River is now known only for being the film that kick-started Tony Curtis' screen career. But it was also the template for such crucial 1950s movies as Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause.
Adolescent angst summarised in one great title! Parental neglect and alcoholism in a respectable suburban family results in a sensitive teenager chosing a live of crime that ends in manslaughter.
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Three youths, bereft of parental guidance, who have turned to petty crime are placed in the care of an army veteran and his wife who set out to put them on the right track. You'd hardly guess what the movie is all bout by looking at this poster.
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This movie sternly demands that parents take responsibility for their children's upbringing in order to prevent their offspring wearing short skirts, smoking and joining gangs.
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For most movie fans, Hollywood's look at juvenile delinquency is associated with the 1950s and such key films as Blackboard Jungle and Rebel Without a Cause, plus that era's numerous teenage exploitation 'B' movies with magnificently lurid titles, such as Hot Rod Girl. But in fact movies about wayward adolescents had become a Hollywood genre a decade earlier.The three posters above advertise movies issued during the years 1943-1945. The origins of this genre can be traced to an earlier period in Hollywood history - the 1930s - when films like Wild Boys of the Road and Angels With Dirty Faces were popular.The thirties and forties delinquency genre shared similar themes: juvenile crime arose out of parental neglect and/or a deprived socio-economic background. But a new factor was involved in the 1940s' cycle of delinquency movies: widespread fears that the widespread absence of fathers serving in the military overseas meant that children were bereft of paternal guidance / authority figures. This fear was frequently expressed by child-saver groups and community and civic figures. Another interesting feature is that these forties' films often blamed middle-class parents for being too concerned with their own interests, especially gaining wealth and material possessions while neglecting their parental responsibilities. City Across the River, however, focuses on the issue of socio-economic deprivation of youth as a cause of youthful crime.
The movie's source:
In the mid-1940s, Irving Shulman's novel about youth and crime in working-class sections of Brooklyn became a best-seller. It was especially popular with teenage male readers (most of whom probably read the expurgated paperback version).The book is about a teenage street gang, the Amboy Street Dukes, and its theme is the upheaval that the war inflicted on family and social structures. It focuses on the lackof parental guidance for teenagers during this time, either because parents were absent at war or work, or were abdicating their responsibilities. Shulman's book fit the mood of contemproary concersn about parenting and juvenile delinquency. Its colorful gangster slang, vivid slum settings, along with occasional bursts of violence and hints of sex made its transition to cinema inevitable.
Shulman also played an important part in one of the most important films of the 1950s: Rebel Without a Cause. He wrote the original version of the screenplay for that movie; the final version was by Stewart Stern, who used Shulman's treatment as well as work by the director, Nicholas Ray. 
Spot Tony Curtis in this shot of the gang members in the movie.
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The Director 'Fear in the Night' Maxwell Shane's 1947 exercise in film noir.
The New York Times obituary for City Across the River's writer-director Maxwell Shane described his scripts as "forgettable time-fillers". Shane (1905 - 1983) first studied law, then became a journalist and went to Hollywood as a publicist. He wrote screenplays and eventually directed sevreal movies in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Most of these were B-grade noirish thrillers,like Fear in the Night and The Naked Street. However, City Across the River, based on his own script, is Shane's one film that is worth attention.The Universal-International studio shrewdly cast several of its young male actors as gang members. They included Anthony Curtis, whose performance as the gang leader (with duck-tail hair style and leather jacket) helped propel him to stardom as Tony Curtis. The studio also toned down the violence and sexual intensity of the novel. |
As these lobby cards for the film show, City Across the River focus on the consequences of juvenile crime for the individual and the family
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The significance of The City Across the River
City Across the River follows the story of Frank Cusack, a leading member of the Amboy Dukes teenage gang based in a slum-ridden area of Brooklyn. His activities with the gang ultimately lead him from vandalism and hooliganism to complicity in the murder of a school teacher. His hopes -and those of his parents - for an escape from the bleakness of slum life are dashed by his willingness to accept the gang code of not informing to the police.
The film's considerable impact comes from several factors. Although it is not shot in documentary realism style, its settings seem authentic. So does the language. The fact that the cast lacks big name stars and consists mainly of unrecognizable actors makes it more convincing. Most importantly, the film emphasizes the terrible consequences of the son's thoughtless actions for his parents and sister. The parents, especially the mother (Thelma Ritter) are shown as decent, thoughtful working-class people devoting their efforts to provide their children with an education that will enable both siblings to rise out of the tenements. It is a tragic irony that these efforts mean their supervision and guidance of Frank is neglected. The subtlety of this insight is lacking not only in delinquency movies of the I Blame My Parents genre. It gives City a resonance lacking in the most famous of 1950s movies about juvenile crime, Rebel Without a Cause. That movie transplants the familial situation of City into a comfortable middle-class location, but because the family is affluent, with all the advantages, and the son is essentially a whining, spoiled brat, Nicholas Ray's movie lacks the emotional depth of City Across the River.
Although City does suggest that lack of parental supervision is a reason for juvenile delinquency, it squarely pins the blame on living conditions as the chief cause: squalid and unhygienic surroundings, run-down tenements, cramped living space, overcrowding.The moods of frustration and hopelessness created by such an environment, the movie insists, are the reasons behind juvenile delinquency. City Across the River is also interesting in the way in which it highlights the parents' efforts to obtain a good education for their children as a way of uplifting the next generation from a sordid and dangerous environment. This theme was incorporated into Blackboard Jungle, the excellent 1956 movie which also featured life in a rundown area of New York city. A crucial scene in the earlier movie (see clip below) features youths taunting a teacher and disrupting a class: again, this was an important aspect of Blackboard Jungle
The film's considerable impact comes from several factors. Although it is not shot in documentary realism style, its settings seem authentic. So does the language. The fact that the cast lacks big name stars and consists mainly of unrecognizable actors makes it more convincing. Most importantly, the film emphasizes the terrible consequences of the son's thoughtless actions for his parents and sister. The parents, especially the mother (Thelma Ritter) are shown as decent, thoughtful working-class people devoting their efforts to provide their children with an education that will enable both siblings to rise out of the tenements. It is a tragic irony that these efforts mean their supervision and guidance of Frank is neglected. The subtlety of this insight is lacking not only in delinquency movies of the I Blame My Parents genre. It gives City a resonance lacking in the most famous of 1950s movies about juvenile crime, Rebel Without a Cause. That movie transplants the familial situation of City into a comfortable middle-class location, but because the family is affluent, with all the advantages, and the son is essentially a whining, spoiled brat, Nicholas Ray's movie lacks the emotional depth of City Across the River.
Although City does suggest that lack of parental supervision is a reason for juvenile delinquency, it squarely pins the blame on living conditions as the chief cause: squalid and unhygienic surroundings, run-down tenements, cramped living space, overcrowding.The moods of frustration and hopelessness created by such an environment, the movie insists, are the reasons behind juvenile delinquency. City Across the River is also interesting in the way in which it highlights the parents' efforts to obtain a good education for their children as a way of uplifting the next generation from a sordid and dangerous environment. This theme was incorporated into Blackboard Jungle, the excellent 1956 movie which also featured life in a rundown area of New York city. A crucial scene in the earlier movie (see clip below) features youths taunting a teacher and disrupting a class: again, this was an important aspect of Blackboard Jungle
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Two Cliomuse.com pages related to issues raised by City Across the River
This excellent 1956 movie used some of the themes and settings found in 1949's 'City Across the River'.
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'Don't Knock the Rock', the follow-up to 'Rock Around the Clock' used rock 'n' roll as the focus for parental concerns about teenage behaviour. The movie advocated tolerance on the part of parents.
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