For those made curious by the title, the particular Street of Chance in this 1942 noir is Tillary Street. That’s where Burgess Meredith comes close to getting pulverized by concrete falling from a building demolition. When he comes to, he tells a policeman he is Frank Thompson. And yet, he has a cigarette case in his pocket with the initials D.N. The same initials are in a hat a nearby kid says Meredith was wearing at the time of the accident.
And so the central mystery is established. Meredith loses his memory from a stray chunk of concrete that struck him in the head, resulting in doubts as to his identity. He can’t even remember where he was going when the accident happened.
He goes to where he believes he lives, but finds the apartment vacant. The landlady says she hasn’t seen him in months and wondered if he wants to take the apartment again. Confused and frustrated, he demands she tell him where his wife lives now.
When he gets there, he finds the name tag over the doorbell has his wife’s maiden name written above the crossed-out married name. Not the best sign. But it turns out she only moved after he went AWOL, and she even takes him in and gives him sympathy. She says she even covered for him during his absence from work, telling his employer he had a nervous breakdown. Just imagine how well that would go over with any employer nowadays.
And he even gets his old job back. On his way into the office, however, he sees a guy who is obviously very angry to see Meredith. At the end of the day, Meredith is cautious when leaving the office, and with good reason—that angry guy runs after Meredith’s cab like he’s The Terminator. When the cab had to stop at a red light, this guy frantically starts hitting at the car window using the butt of his pistol!
This is a very exciting scene, and I would say worth a viewing for it alone. At the same time, it is unfortunate nothing else in this picture is as memorable.
In an attempt to jog his memory, Meredith returns to Tillary Street. There, he tries to pawn the cigarette case bearing those mysterious initials. The proprietor gives him the brush-off, saying that is same case he tried to pawn there three previous times.
At this point, this movie started to feel like some sort of proto-Momento, as Meredith tries to overcome his memory loss and learn exactly who he is. We eventually will have equal evidence supporting the possibility he is the married and meek Frank Thompson or that he could be the thuggish Danny Nearing. If he is the latter, he may have a committed a murder at a large estate where he was employed.
There is so much contradictory information thrown at the viewer that I was worried the film would cop out with an “it was all a dream” ending. While I don’t want to give any hints that might spoil the actual conclusion, I was left frustrated, and with more questions than I had prior to a rather odd reveal an the conclusion.
Street of Chance is an average noir, which I find frustrating, as there are a couple of spectacular scenes in it that revealed potential for it to have been so much more.
Dir: Jack Hively
Starring Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor, Louise Platt
Watched as part of Kino Lorber’s Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema VIII blu-ray box set