Side Street, Anthony Mann (U.S., 1950)

An underpaid mailman with a pregnant wife (Cathy O’Donnell), Joe (Farley Granger) is about to go postal. Instead, he nicks an envelope from an office, hoping for a few bucks but getting thirty thousand large. Then he finds that blackmailers, the rightful owners, want the dough returned COD (corpse on delivery). New York City appears raw, exposed, and heartless in this suffocating noir. Pursued by homicidal James Craig, soft-spoken Granger takes to the side streets but the concrete canyons entrap rather than embrace. Not even a speeding car (in a prototypical chase) can break free of the grinding gridlock.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Sydney Boehm. Photographed by Joseph Ruttenberg. With Farley Granger, Cathy O’Donnell, James Craig, Jean Hagen. (82 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Warner Bros.)