City Streets is a relatively early example from the gangster genre, but so imbued with poetry that it more closely resembles the rough beauty of Sternberg’s early crime films than the more violent works that would follow in the wake of Scarface’s success the following year. Paramount star Gary Cooper is the Kid, a sweet, roguish naïf working at a shooting gallery when he falls in love with a mobster’s daughter. Her ambivalence towards her father’s life of crime and the Kid’s resistance to becoming a gangster present obstacles to the consummation of their love in this touching romance with exquisite cinematography by the great Lee Garmes.