" La Rue Sans Nom." At the Rialto Tins French
talkie is like a selection of pages from a sordidly powerful novel ; but too many pages are missing. The " street without a name," in the slums of Paris, is the scene of a reunion between two old partners in crime. One of them lives there with a kindly wife and a vicious son ; the other turns up, unexpected and unwelcome, with a beautiful daughter (Pola Illery), whose youthful charm disorganizes the entire street. There are quarrels, jealousies ; at last the returned criminal is betrayed to the police by the other's son, and both go off handcuffed together.
The film is well photographed and finely acted, within its narrow range. Particularly impressive is an old workman whose trembling wits are finally crazed by the girl's arrival. Ignoring the needs of his family, he dresses himself in a new suit and sits in silence hour after hour, gazing across the street at a pair of stockings hanging from the girl's window. But too many situations depend on past events that are never fully explained ; and I doubt whether La Rue Sans Nom, for all its unusual atmosphere and forcible sincerity, will appeal very widely to English audiences.
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