The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
89. 1937 - Dead End
Honourable Mentions: Angel, La Grande Illusion, You Only Live Once
Most noteworthy today for a supporting turn from a pre-breakout Humphrey Bogart, William Wyler's Dead End is a proto gangster drama rooted in the zeitgeist of the Great Depression and the jarring polarity of New York City's economic composition. It's a film where the extremes of the Depression are rendered in close proximity, compacted together in a story of generational struggle and violence, with Bogey playing the role of a vicious gangster rejected by the community he once called home.
More than just a showcase of the persona that catapulted Bogart to Hollywood stardom, Dead End also exemplifies the technical brilliance of one of the greatest directors of Hollywood's Golden Age. Wyler's legacy would be cemented with his valuable wartime works and with post-war epics like The Big Country and Ben-Hur, but Dead End illustrates his versatile strengths in full clarity.