The first thing that stuck me as I was watching this gem was the lack of a sound track. Other than the club scene where a band is jamming there is no music at all. The introduction of sound in film was so recent that technique hadn't been fully developed yet. But the strange thing is that the dialog was enough to fill that void. It actually didn't even appear as a shortcoming. And another strange thing: the bad guys were played by actors who always play honorable characters, Paul Lukas and Guy Kibbee, and boy are they despicable. Very good at it too, especially Kibbee. I never thought of that jovial, ebullient character actor as able to bring it off but he does, and well. As for Lukas he is evil incarnate. There's plenty of other reasons to watch this one. The story is gripping. The camera work was way ahead of its time. Character development is superior. And I could go on and on. If there was ever a film deserving to be digitized this one is it.

I was lucky indeed to come up with a copy of this classic that is sadly not available. This was Rouben Mamoulian's first screen hit after the critical misfire of his first film Applause.

This was Gary Cooper's one and only film in the gangster genre though he did run into a few gangsters in Ball Of Fire. Of course his western persona is not one you would think would fit into the gangster film, but his character of a rodeo cowboy who was stranded in the big city and was now making a living at a shooting gallery, presumably in Coney Island rings true enough.

Coop's skill as a marksman is noticed by his girlfriend Sylvia Sydney who tries to interest him in going into the beer racket. But her own stepfather Guy Kibbee gets her involved in the murder of Stanley Fields and she takes a two year fall as an accomplice. In the meantime while Sylvia ponders the error of her ways in the joint, Cooper who was reluctant when she was out has now joined with Kibbee and is now a confidante of the big boss Paul Lukas.

Lukas is a suave and menacing gangster in one of his earliest sound roles. Guy Kibbee who usually played buffoons in later films at Warner Brothers and MGM will be quite the revelation as a really slimy character. Later on Kibbee was so typecast he could never have been given a part like this which he performs so well.

Mamoulian gets top flight performances from his whole cast. Cooper and Sydney are great in the leads. Mamoulian had great help from Dashiell Hammett who wrote his only original screenplay for City Streets. And special phrase must also go to Wynne Gibson who plays Lukas's moll and when she's scorned, she takes a terrible vengeance.

Paramount was not a studio known for gangster films, later on they did get their own gangster star in George Raft and Gary Cooper was not known for this genre. But in this case Paramount gave him one of his best early sound features. Do not miss this and demand that TCM broadcast it.