Mon 15 Feb 2010
Movie Review: EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (1949).
Posted by Steve under Films: Drama/Romance , Reviews[5] Comments
EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE. MGM, 1949. Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner, Cyd Charisse, Nancy Davis, Gale Sondergaard, William Conrad, Douglas Kennedy, Beverly Michaels, William Frawley. Screenplay: Isobel Lennart, based on the novel by Marcia Davenport. Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
The book this movie is based on is not included in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, nor without having a copy in my hands, but relying on what I have read about it on the Internet, do I believe it should be. It’s described by one source as a novel about the “post-war social strata in New York [City]” and that those who love the social history of the city should enjoy it immensely.
Hence the title, of course, and never the twain shall meet — except of course for the fact that they do, and when they do, the results can be both devastating and disastrous to everyone involved. And buried in the otherwise soapy melodrama that constitutes the bulk of the movie based on the book, right around the three-quarters mark, is 15 minutes of crime drama that made me sit up and take notice.
Truth in reviewing: I’d avoided reading about the movie and the storyline beforehand, but when I saw William Conrad’s name in the credits, that gave me some advance notice, and of course Barbara Stanwyck is no stranger to noir-oriented movies, is she?
Consider, then, the following set of interlocking triangles. I’ll omit the characters’ names, and refer to them only by the actors. Stanwyck is married to vain and self-centered Mason, who is infatuated with the beautiful Gardner, who knows it and who hangs out with nightclub owner Kennedy, whose other girl friend is brassy blonde Michaels.
Returning from Europe as a WWII correspondent is Heflin, a non-society guy who falls in love with Stanwyck; he in return is the object of a schoolgirl crush, that of Charisse, who is a fashion model whom Stanwyck knows from the shows she attends, and who (Charisse) saves Mason from an embarrassing newspaper scandal by rescuing him after he’s punched out by Douglas (remember him?)
Eventually a murder occurs, and this is where Conrad comes in — a homicide detective. Frawley is a bartender in Douglas’s night club, just to make sure I’ve mentioned everybody. Well, almost: Davis is one of Stanwyck’s society friends and a close confidant, and Sondergaard is her mother, whom Mason thinks he has utterly charmed.
There is one scene in this movie that I will not forget, one in which Barbara Michael (described as being built like the Empire State Building) and Van Heflin have a brief but ferocious bare-knuckle fist fight. (In high heels she is indeed taller than he is.) They are hampered by being in the front seat of a car together, but it is one of the fiercest out-and-out slugfests between a man and a woman that I can remember ever seeing on the screen.
While her performance is largely understated, Stanwyck is as perfect in her role as she always is. Mason is never so eloquent as he is when his makes his final plea for her love. As for Ava Gardner, is she or is she not the most beautiful woman ever to appear on the Hollywood screen? No wonder James Mason is infatuated with her, like a moth to the flame.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:05 am
The murder plot is one aspect of Marcia Davenport’s big thick novel. but not enough to get in Hubin as you suggest. Davenport wrote big thick mostly women’s fiction being best known for her novel of a coal mining dynasty and a poor girl who marries into it, THE VALLEY OF DECISION.
The movie on the other hand has a nice tough noirish feel under the New York sophistication, and with that cast, noir was virtually impossible to avoid.
I’m pleased to see someone else likes this one. I first saw it when I was still a teen and thought it was better than the soap opera it was being sold as. Though in fairness murder, blackmail, adultery, and extortion show up in many books and films with that soap opera cachet that don’t really belong in Hubin including PEYTON PLACE, BY LOVE POSSESSED, and WHERE LOVE HAS GONE.
This one might eke by in Hubin with a dash, but I really think the film gives more room to the crime element than the book does.
This one reteamed Heflin and Stanwyck who had previously played opposite each other in the noir classic THE STRANGE LOVES OF MARTHA IVERS.
April 17th, 2010 at 8:14 pm
[…] include The Killers (1946), Body and Soul (1947), Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), Tension (1949), East Side, West Side (1949), One Way Street (1950), Dial 1119 (1950), Cry Danger (1951), The Racket (1951), Cry of the […]
November 20th, 2010 at 8:14 am
There is definitely a noir aspect to this movie, which I happened to see on TCM recently. There’s also an hilarious, campy aspect to it, particularly to the Mason roll, and most particularly to the moment when he makes the effort to keep Stanwyck from leaving him–“you put up with the hockey games, I put up with the ballet and poetry readings” he says more or less. The wife and I sat up at that in amazement. Mason would obviously have been at the ballet, Stanwyck at the hockey game. In fact, Mason is as gay in this movie as Vincent Price–and in this regard, “East Side, West Side” carries a subtext as weird and obvious in retrospect as Hughes “The Outlaw.” To my tastes, the most beautiful woman in the movie is Stanwyck. She has character and will. The Gardner character is weak and her head’s too big for her shoulders. Of course Gardner’s roles are all damaged by her inability to act.
November 22nd, 2010 at 12:33 am
i just saw the movie but missed the end…who kills the ava gardner character?
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:38 pm
I’ve replied to Karen directly, since it’s been too long since I watched the movie. I think it was xxx xxxx’s character, but I could be all wrong about this. I never remember the endings of most detective novels, movies either. Give me a few months and I can read or watch one all over again.