Street of Chance

4/5/2014

As luck would have it… Street of Chance is directed by Jack Hively and adapted to screenplay by Garrett Fort from the novel "The Black Curtain" written by Cornell Woolrich. It stars Burgess Meredith, Claire Trevor, Louise Platt, Sheldon Leonard, Frieda Inescort and Jerome Cowan. Music is by David Buttolph and cinematography by Theodor Sparkuhl. After being felled by falling wreckage from a New York building, Frank Thompson (Meredith) awakes in the street to find he has some sort of amnesia and his life may not be as he thought. As he starts to piece together his life he comes to realise he may have committed a murder and is actually on the run! An early entry in the original film noir cycle, Street of Chance takes what would become a familiar film noir theme, amnesia, and seas

9/1/2025

The complexities of the plot don’t readily make for a succinct summary but the interweaving stories of “Frank” and “Danny” (Burgess Meredith) make themselves pretty clear from the mysterious outset. It’s “Frank” who narrowly avoids some falling masonry only to awaken in hospital with what appears to be a completely different identity. Inexplicably pursued by a strange man (Sheldon Leonard), he visits his erstwhile home only to find his wife “Virginia” (Louise Platt) had moved on over a year ago. When he finally tracks her down, she is shocked to see him and that’s just the first shock as his memory loss fails to explain just what happened in the intervening year, nor explain to him just whom “Danny” is. Gradually retracing his recent life, he not only discovers that he is wanted for murder