Starting off slowly and moving to a boil, this movie quickly cools and sadly never regains momentum. But for those middle of the movie moments, this is like a volcano that suddenly burps and dies. With the gorgeous Maureen O'Hara, you'd think it's her, but the honors of making this rise up is the unrecognizable Dame Sybil Thorndike who, complete with wart and mustache, becomes as close to a Dickens character in a non Dickens character. She's a vicious blackmailer, seemingly just around the corner from death, but being the daughter of Satan plaguing the London slums, she's the type of character that you could see living forever.O'Hara is completely ladylike member of the upper middle class (not quite rich, buy mighty close...) who falls for a sophisticated but poor artist (the unrecognizable Dana Andrews) who secretly drinks and turns her marriage into a nightmare. Thorndike, stalking O'Hara and Andrews, witnesses what appears to be his accidental death, and viciously manipulates O'Hara into a payoff. Along comes a promising puppeteer (also Andrews!) who gets the pleasure of dealing with this vicious hag. That's where this loses steam, going from hag to sag within just a very short time.This had so much potential for becoming a classic Gothic thriller, with Thorndike as unforgettable as Martita Hunt in the recent "Great Expectations", but changes to the direction don't really help sustain complete interest. This is gorgeous to look at with upper middle class homes and the peasant setting stark contrasts to each other yet both stunning to look at. Wilfred Hyde White is commanding as O'Hara's father, and the rest of the ensemble seems perfectly suited to the period. Had I been an Academy voter in 1949, I would have pushed Thorndike for Best Supporting Actress, one of the great movie villainesses I've seen in a long time.

When Dana Andrews appeared on the screen, I was shocked. Shocked because out of his mouth came the strangest British voice--strange because it obviously was dubbed! The voice and the face just don't go together at all! And, combined with the bohemian hair and goatee, he's definitely an actor out of his element!! Maureen O'Hara plays the title character. She is a lower upper-class girl whose home overlooks the Mews--a stretch of slum apartments surrounding the stables. She falls in love (or, it's more like a girlish infatuation) with an artist (Andrews) and runs off with him. Her parents are angered, as he is from the lower class--so they cut her off. O'Hara assumes they'll live off love and be content, but that doesn't last long. Andrews drinks and has little ambition--and soon the marriage is all but over. When they argue one day, he falls off the stairs to his death--and a neighbor (a decrepit old crow) sees it and blackmails her. This is an interesting twist, but also made no sense, as the police almost certainly would not have believed the blackmailer and O'Hara was a lady. But, despite this and no evidence it was anything other than an accident (which it was), she pays the old bat and is forced to stay in the Mews--and she's being bled dry in the process.Later in the film, a really, really goofy thing occurs--a 10 on a goofiness scale. Dana Andrews appears once again--but he's playing a different character! This one looks like the traditional Andrews and it is really his voice--along with a somewhat British accent...somewhat. This Andrews is an out of luck actor who drinks. He asks her what she bothers to stay in this dump--a wonderful and very insightful question! He soon helps her rid herself of the blackmailer--using something she lacks--common sense! Soon, the pair begin cohabiting--him assuming the role of her new husband (though the film is cagey about whether or not they sleep together--it seems they probably and inexplicably did not).One of the first things Andrews #2 does is discovers the dead husband's project--a set of beautiful puppets (which, by the way, O'Hara hated and discouraged Andrews #1 from making). He suddenly shows a lot of ambition and sobriety--and learns to be an expert puppeteer. As a result of his new fame, the two are able to have a nice life due to his great success. And, in the process, the Mews is transformed into a far less crappy neighborhood. Some time later, when O'Hara sees her brother, she pretends (why?!?!) that Andrews #2 is Andrews #1...whatever. Will the ruse be discovered? Will anyone care? This film features the horrible cliché of identical strangers as well as no reasonable reason for O'Hara remaining in the Mews and paying blackmail. When a story relies on a character behaving this stupidly, it's a bad film unless it is supposed to be a comedy--and this was no comedy (aside from Andrews' dubbed voice...THAT was funny!). Despite good acting and some nice Twentieth-Century Fox polish, the film really was a silly and convoluted mess because the script was often dumb.

Dreadful film.Dana Andrews takes a double role here. In his first part, he tries to do an imitation of Ronald Colman. Where did he ever dream up that accent? It was awful. This was Dana's biggest bomb in pictures. Even in 1945's "State Fair," he was far superior here.The best performance by far here is by Dame Sybil Thorndike as a nasty woman who blackmails Maureen O'Hara, when hubby Andrews takes a fatal flop down the staircase. Had the picture kept up with the blackmailing, it would have been far superior. Instead, it jumps to 3 years later when from out of the blue, Andrews reappears as a look alike to the fallen husband. He quickly chases the old bat Thorndike away; takes up with O'Hara but sleeps separately from her because he is already married. Nice morals are displayed here.Having found the dead husband's puppets, Dana #2 and Maureen soon go into the puppetry business and because of it, Brittania Mews, a slum for all seasons, soon becomes a different environment. Isn't this just ducky?In showing the slum area, the set decorations are even worse than you expect.This misery lasts for 1:37. Too much to handle.

This film has not appeared on television since the 1970s, when it appeared as "Forbidden Street". It is a little film with some melodrama in it regarding the death of Dana Andrews' first character (who falls out of a window) and the blackmail of Maureen O'Hara by Sybil Thorndike, but it is really of interest in the second half when Andrews (in his second role) uses a set of hand carved puppets to change this street in the slums into a thriving middle class neighborhood. An odd way to prosperity, but interesting nonetheless.Sybil Thorndike was a remarkable actress, whose film career is not as strong as the other actors and actresses of her generation who reached stardom. Her performances on film go back to the silent films (of England), but in sound films she appeared in good cameo parts, but she never had a set of critically acclaimed leading roles like Olivier, Richardson, Redgrave, Coward, Guilgud, Evans, Ashcroft, or Rutherford. Ashcroft and Rutherford also had supporting roles in film too but both actresses had "Oscars" to show for these, as did Olivier, Guilgud, and even Coward. Yet Thorndike did get recognition for her acting with a title as "Dame" Sybil Thorndike (like "Dame" Edith Evans, and "Dame" Peggy Ashcroft). Today, to catch her performances, one has to see her in MAJOR BARBARA as the Salvation Army General or in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL as the Queen Mother (Lawrence Olivier's mother-in-law). Both roles certainly give you an idea of her range as an actress in comedy, but FORBIDDEN STREET shows how she was in a dramatic role - as a elderly hag who blackmails Maureen O'Hara into tolerating her continuous presence, and who actually just wanted O'Hara to love her as a mother (or so she claims). It is an odd role, and she handles it with great ability. One wishes that sound had existed in the films of her youth (the silent period). At that time Thorndike played the role of Ophelia opposite John Barrymore's Hamlet. It would have been worth seeing. Let us hope that FORBIDDEN STREET is released again on dvd or video, so we can see Dame Sybil in a dramatic part again.