UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

JohnHowardReid The Big Street is one of those sentimental little yarns blown up from the whimsical attractiveness of print to the harsher light of the cinema screen. It is the sort of story that Damon Runyon excels in - and here he is producing it for the screen himself! Alas, the principal pleasure in reading his stories is his very characteristic literary style - a tongue-in-cheek amalgam of East Side slang and back of Broadway jargon - that is extremely difficult to transfer to the screen without losing the bite and humor that is an essential ingredient of its flavor. One-dimensional characters which seem so amusing on the printed page are also much less appealing on the screen unless the players can achieve exactly the right balance between fancy and reality.This adaptation is only moderately successful. The direction is routine and production values are very moderate. A lot of obvious process work doesn't really help either. On the other hand, Russell Metty's lighting photography is so polished and atmospheric and the sets and costumes are so attractive as to overshadow the lack of craftsmanship in other departments. Furthermore, the cast is outstanding. True, some of the more interesting players like Eugene Pallette, Agnes Moorehead and Barton MacLane have only small parts, but Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball make a worthy team. Fonda manages to bring absolute conviction and sincerity to the incredibly naive and almost impossibly devoted Little Pinks. As for Lucille Ball, she herself and many critics regard her characterization of the willful and conceited Gloria as her finest screen performance.N.B. Similarity of the plot and principal characters to those of Midnight Cowboy (1969) should not go unnoticed. Miss Ball's singing voice was dubbed by Martha Mears.

mark.waltz To laugh at Lucy is not to know her as a dramatic actress, and in this Damon Runyeon drama, she is at her dramatic, bitchiest best. The wise-cracking girl of "Stage Door" (1937) has grown up, and here she is a gangster's moll nightclub singer. Busboy Henry Fonda is enamored of her to the point where he refers to her as "Your Highness", a nickname Lucy's maid Louise Beavers goes mad over. "Coming, Your Highness!" she responds to Ball's "Hey Ruby, move your big fat feet!", Beavers adding on that boisterous laugh that jolts her own heart full of gold. But to Lucy, Fonda's "Little Pinks" has a heart full of mush, something she'll need when her "daddy" (Barton MacLane) pushes her down a flight of stairs after she threatens to leave him and blames it on the fact that she was drunk. Her Broadway pals all disappear on her with the exception of Fonda and Beavers. Broke and desperate, Ball moves in to Fonda's small apartment, continues to abuse him, and lives off the champagne and caviar that he scrapes together nightly so she can continue to live in her dream world. Her desire is to go to Florida so she can see the man she really loves (William T. Orr), a socialite bore not worthy of her time. Fonda quits his job and pushes her there in her wheel chair, where his pals Violet (Agnes Moorehead) and Nicely Nicely Johnson (Eugene Palette) have opened a ocean front burger dive. It is there that Ball learns the true meaning of total unselfishness, something she had earlier been ignoring in her own spirit.Yes, the idea of Henry Fonda pushing Lucille Ball from New York to Florida in a wheelchair might sound absurd, but somehow, the movie pulls it off. To see Lucy playing such a hard character might be difficult for her comedy fans to accept. More than 20 years after her death, Lucy still reigns as TV's top female clown. But before that, she had a very versatile movie career, singing and dancing in "Best Foot Forward" and "DuBarry Was a Lady", and clowning around Lucy Ricardo style in "Her Husband's Affairs" and "The Fuller Brush Girl". This is Lucy at her cinematic best. Henry Fonda seems a bit out of sorts as the busboy whose unrequited love for her goes unnoticed. Two years after his dramatic triumph in "The Grapes of Wrath", this is almost a step down for him, but he does so with noble results. And that supporting cast. Wow. Agnes Moorehead goes from the shy Violet who replaces Eugene Palette in an eating contest to his nagging wife, and is very funny. Palette is adorable here, playing Nicely Nicely much different than Stubby Kaye would later do on Broadway and in the film version of "Guys and Dolls". MacLane is appropriately mean, Beavers loving, and Ray Collins the Greek Chorus of the plot. Add on Marion Martin as a Florida socalite and Sam Levene, who would be Nathan Detroit 8 years later when "Guys and Dolls" made it to Broadway. All in all, this is a film that can't be skipped.

Jimmy L. It's always fun to spend time around the colorful characters of Damon Runyon's stories. He always wrote about eccentric New York City gamblers with hearts of gold and stylish lingo ("Guys and Dolls", "Little Miss Marker", "Lady for a Day"/"Pocketful of Miracles").Here the lovable mugs are played by an excellent cast including Ray Collins, Sam Levene, Eugene Palette, Agnes Moorehead, Millard Mitchell, and Hans Conried. Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball star, with Barton MacLane as the heavy.Runyon wrote the original story and produced this film, which tells the story of a humble busboy (Fonda) who is devoted to a selfish night club singer (Ball), even when she falls on hard times. It's got that sort of fairy tale spark evident in other Runyon stories, with the gambling community pooling their resources to help make someone's dream come true. In a way it's a love story, and in another way it's a very sad, tragic tale.Fonda's character comes across as pathetic, fawning over Ball's ungrateful diva when it is clear she is ugly on the inside. But his friends feel sorry for him and do all they can to help him help her.The greatest performances come from Ray Collins and Sam Levene as The Professor and Horsethief, respectively: the two most vocal Broadway mugs. Collins in particular is delightfully colorful. Bullfrog-throated Eugene Palette plays the part of Nicely-Nicely Johnson, made famous by Stubby Kaye in the musical "Guys and Dolls". Agnes Moorehead, in only her third film (after two Orson Welles pictures), lends lovable support. Lucille Ball is lovely and puts in a rather nice performance in an unconventional role for her.Damon Runyon's characters are always fun, and the scenes with Collins & co. buoy the story weaknesses.6.5/10

beyondtheforest I'm going to overlook a few minor flaws this film had and conclude, overall, it was great. It is a story of the unselfish love a 'Little' Busboy (Fonda) has for a beautiful and extremely popular nightclub singer (Ball). Ball initially has every rich man in town at her feet, from a powerful gangster to a wealthy glamor boy who she plans to marry. Her defining line of dialog is, "A girl's best friend is a dollar." She is somehow both cruel and yet sympathetic. She is fair to the busboy who saves her dog, thanking him and getting him a job, but then does not give him the time of day. She lives by the customs of society--and that does not include mixing in certain circles of 'little' people, such as busboys and maids.I think the more sensitive audiences will pick up on Ball's vulnerability. Why is she so concerned with money? Why does she snub people who are kind to her? If you follow the movie closely enough, the answers become apparent.When Ball's character is struck down by the gangster after she chooses to leave him, she is paralyzed from the waist down. It is revealed to the audience that she has no family or loved ones besides her dog that are willing to care for her. A sensitive audience would notice that detail and immediately understand her character. She has no one--that is why she is so hard. She is playing the social game to win--to snare a wealthy husband so she doesn't have to be frightened any more.The man she had her eyes on, after her accident, no longer had any interest in her. This is one of the most brutal and sad scenes in the film. We understand then why Ball was so eager not to be seen with the 'little' people; it was part of the social game she needed to play. When that same young man sees her with a group of her lowly friends, and in a wheelchair, a look of disgust enters his face, and Ball's heart shatters into a million pieces. As noted in the film, "That glamor boy doesn't have a sympathetic bone in his body." All of this is by way of countering arguments made by subsequent viewers that Ball's character is completely unsympathetic. Just the opposite is true. Her character is complex, deep, and vulnerable to the carelessness of the world around her. A world in which she has no family and no one loves her--that is, except Pinkerton (Fonda).Another magical scene occurs at the end of the film where it is revealed Ball can actually walk. The society that had judged and forgotten her so harshly because she was no longer able to walk stares on in amazement. But the fact she can walk proves she didn't need their acceptance at all. They were a superficial lot of people who didn't care about her at all.It is a magical and moving love story for the ages. A+ She