CROOKED STREETS – Ethel Clayton
Crooked Streets (1920)
Direction: Paul Powell
Screenplay: Edith M. Kennedy; from a story by Samuel Merwin
Cast: Ethel Clayton, Jack Holt, Clyde Fillmore, Josephine Crowell
Beautiful Ethel Clayton, a major star in the 1910s, plays a young woman who takes a job as secretary to a Professor of antiquities about to embark upon a trip to China. Clayton, however, has a secret motive for wanting to get to China.
Crooked Streets is an excellent action-packed drama with a particularly impressive lengthy chase sequence in which Clayton rides alone to a dangerous part of town and is attacked by a massive crowd of Chinese locals. The film also offers a great fight sequence between Jack Holt and a Chinese thug who lusts after Clayton.
William Marshall’s cinematography is beautiful, while director Paul Powell handles the proceedings with a stylish and assured directorial hand. Cinesation ran a gorgeous 35 mm print from the Library of Congress.
Reviewed at Cinesation 2009
© James Bazen
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Tags: Cinesation 2009, Classic Movies, Crooked Streets, Ethel Clayton, Film Reviews, Jack Holt, Paul Powell, Silent Films
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