Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 41: Down and Out

Next up is Dead End which was nominated for Best Picture at the 1938 awards but lost to The Life of Emile Zola. It is also an adaptation of a play of the same name that featured the first appearance of the Dead End Kids a gang of slum children who would appear in several other films including, most notably, Angels with Dirty Faces. In this film the Dead End Kids' slum is at the back of a new block of luxury apartments and after roughing up one of the rich kids the gang gets in trouble with the child's father, one of the kids - Tommy inadvertently stabs him in the hand and ends up going into hiding. Other plots see Tommy's sister Drina not wanting to see her brother resort to a life of crime and Drina's friend Dave beginning a relationship with a woman who is having an affair with a rich man the two of them knowing they can never be together as Dave cannot support her the way she is already being supported. The third plot strand involves Humphrey Bogart's Babyface Martin returning to the slums to visit his mother and reunite with his old girlfriend however when he finds out the former wants nothing to do with him and the latter has become involved with prostitution he resorts to kidnapping a rich child to make his return worth it. All three plot strands collide as the film reaches its conclusion which sees one character dead and one of the others a hero.

When Dead End was being made, America itself was still in the throes of the depression. While other films, like those by Frank Capra for example, tried to make people forget their troubles when they went to the picture house, Dead End did just the opposite. While the plot isn't exactly thrilling throughout one thing that did strike me was the way that the slum had been constructed and how it represented the juxtaposition between the poor Dead End Kids and the wealthier families in the new apartment blocks, it's no surprise then that it was nominated for both its Art Direction and cinematography. Of the cast, Bogart gives a good supporting performance as the generic mobster character reacting well to the surprises that await him when he returns to his old haunts, this meaty supporting role obviously set him on his way to become a headliner in the next decade.

Joel McCrea also does well as the loveable loser Dave and most of the child actors steer the right side of annoying. However the only acting nomination went to Claire Trevor who starred as Bogart's ex, she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category which was in only its second year at the time. This was also the second William Wyler film to get a Best Picture nomination but bizarrely he didn't feature in the Best Director section. Overall a fairly decent film but not an amazing one and I reckon if the Best Picture nominees were only five, Dead End would've failed to make the cut.

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