Forgotten Movies: Back Street-1932

 Irene Dunne is absolutely effervescent in the first version of Back Street by Fannie Hurst.

Back Street is the story of a woman, who gives up what would have been a good life with a man  she very much liked, to instead follow a man she loved for 25 years. It is heart-breaking to watch her make the choices that would yield her so little in the end. And yet, a love like hers (and his too in the end) is not something to be scorned. John Boles played her lover.

Directed by John Stahl, this is one of his four movies on the Criterion Channel this month. The last fifteen minutes cannot be watched dry-eyed. Dunne never got an Oscar and yet made so many terrific movies and was by all accounts a good woman who lived outside Hollywood Babylon. Also love her in Love Affair, My Favorite Wife, The Awful Truth and I Remember Mama, among many many others.