Back Street (1932 film)
- John Boles: Walter D. Saxel
- June Clyde: Freda Schmidt
- George Meeker: Kurt Schendler
- ZaSu Pitts: Mrs. Dole
- Shirley Grey: Francine
- Doris Lloyd: Saxels Wife
- William Bakewell: Richard Saxel
- Arletta Duncan: Beth Saxel
- Maude Turner Gordon: Mrs. Saxel Sr.
Backstreet is the adaptation of the novel by Fannie Hurst in 1932 with Irene Dunne and John Boles in the lead roles. The film became the largest ever financial success of the studio Universal Pictures and saved the financially troubled company from bankruptcy.
Action
The young Ray Schmidt lives with her father and stepmother. She is on the verge of engagement with Kurt Schendler. Chance brings them together with the distinguished businessman Walter D. Saxel. Their romance ends in a misunderstanding and Walter marries another woman deeply disappointed. Five years later, Walter is already deputy director of a bank and again leads the fate of the two young people together. Ray, who himself has been working successfully in the secretariat of a financial investor, immediately succumbs to the charm of Walter. It announces to his advice towards their position and their apartment to live only for Walter. When his beloved Ray is forced to lead a life in secret. Walter granted her a monthly pension of $ 200 and rents for them a tiny apartment in a side street. The next 25 years is limited, the existence of Ray on the monotonous waiting for Walter and the few shared hours together. When Walter died, Ray is left penniless and dying of despair.
Background
The career of Irene Dunne began in 1931 spectacularly with an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role in the Western Cimarron. However, your studio RKO was not able to provide the actress with equally good exposure in the subsequent period. In the internal hierarchy Studio Dunne was far behind Ann Harding and Constance Bennett on a level with Helen Twelvetrees and Mary Astor. In general, therefore, had to be satisfied with Dunne roles in little ambitious films.
In 1932 she then had a second chance to establish himself as a star, when the studio Universal Pictures you transferred the female lead in the film adaptation of the popular novel of the Backstreet successful author Fannie Hurst. Immediately before Irene Dunne had already participated in the filming of another book of the author, Symphony of Six Million. Universal was in the wake of the global economic crisis and the resulting decline in the weekly attendance figures from 1929 to 1932 by more than 50 per cent caught in heavy financial turmoil. The Studio sat down next to the genre of horror films at the same time many hopes for a series of films that were specifically tailored to the needs of female viewers. In order to address this target group better, the script changed the original character of the heroine in backstreet in considerable amount in order to make him sympathetic. In the literary original Ray is an extremely passive woman without marked intellectual abilities. She spends without any interest in the outside world years and years in a cheap apartment, waiting for the few visits her lover. In the film adaptation of it is a well-bred young lady from pursuing an existence in the shadows, as she calls it himself chooses. Your waiver of own life is a self-chosen decision she makes about the consequences in full consciousness. Also emphasizes the filming, how deep and honest feelings of Walter are who repeatedly exchanging ideas with Ray about his problems and concerns and finds a soul mate in her. Nevertheless, the film does not clarify the final reasons why Ray voluntarily chooses life in the shadow of a married man and leaves multiple pass the chance to marry himself.
The studio made from a virtue of necessity and put the unclear motivations of the heroine firmly at the center of his campaign by spending the slogan:
" Wait - still waiting - in the shade of a backyard ... crave man she loves ... ask for nothing, receive nothing and still happy with it, to sacrifice everything to him. WHY? "
Backstreet proved at the box office as a popular and advanced at the end of the most successful film for the studio for years. The fabric was made into a film in 1941 again with Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer and 1961 under the title terminus Paris with Susan Hayward and John Gavin.
In the period following the basic premise was influential for a whole series of similar films in which the mistress of a married man brings every conceivable sacrifice, just to keep his luck. Other examples are Forbidden with Barbara Stanwyck, also from 1932, or The Life of Vergie Winters with Ann Harding from the year 1934. Contrary to these long suffering lover Kay Francis played preferably self- confident women who were inspired by her lover not constrict and adjacent to the relationship following their own careers, as in Street of Women and I Loved a Woman, in which Francis the overly possessive Edward G. Robinson in their place.
For Irene Dunne, who described the film in later years as trash, the success brought about a whole series of similar roles they as unbearable the ideal of every injustice uncomplaining and long- suffering woman presented and earned her the nickname Lady Gandhi of the Screen. According to his own words, her career was built on tears.
Reviews
Most critics complained about the little original baseline situation and the perceived as bland and boring staging of the substance. Irene Dunne got praise for her understated performance.