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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Street Angel (1928)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Grand Passions

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Murnau, Borzage and Fox on DVD

Frank Borzage's Street Angel was one of three films that earned Janet Gaynor a Best Actress Oscar. I was lucky enough to see it at a film festival screening with a gorgeous, glorious live score by American Music Club. It was one of the great nights of my life. Gaynor stars as Angela, a poor waif who steals medicine for her sick mother and hides out from the law by joining a traveling carnival. A painter (Charles Farrell) becomes smitten by her and does her portrait as the Madonna. But the lovers are separated when Angela is arrested. Borzage directs this soapy stuff with a heavy layer of gauze, but his heart is definitely in the material and it's ultimately potent and moving.

With: Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Alberto Rabagliati, Cino Conti, Guido Trento, Henry Armetta, Louis Liggett, Milton Dickinson, Helena Herman, Natalie Kingston, Dave Kashner, Jennie Bruno
Written by: Philip Klein, Marion Orth, Henry Roberts Symonds, based on a novel by Monckton Hoffe
Directed by: Frank Borzage
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Running Time: 102 minutes
Date: December 1, 2008