In collaboration with Houghton Library’s major fall exhibition Treading the Borders: Immigration and the American Stage, the Harvard Film Archive presents a screening of King Vidor’s Street Scene, depicting the melting pot of cultures, opinions and personalities dramatically converging in a tenement building on a hot summer day in New York.

Much of the richness and vitality of the performing arts in the United States derives from creative talent originating elsewhere. Treading the Borders explores how successive waves of immigration transformed the American stage, highlighting the virtuosity and resilience of a diverse group of actors, artists and entertainers from the colonial era to the present day.

Curator Matthew Wittmann will give a tour of the exhibit—which includes an original poster for Street Scene the stage musical— before the film, from 6:00 – 6:45pm. Meet in the Houghton Library lobby. The show will remain on view through December 15. For more information, visit the Houghton website.

King Vidor’s pre-Code adaptation of Elmer Rice’s popular play retains the voyeuristic confinements of the theatrical set but expands the bustling street tableau with a gently roving camera and naturalistic touches. Over the course of two sweltering summer days, the generational, political, cultural, ethical and tempermental differences among residents of a New York tenement building spill out onto the sidewalk. The film’s central melodrama only gradually emerges out of the stream of arguments and gossip, proselytizing and poetry, drunken kisses and incessant side-glances. A few of the usual suspects appear in this melting pot, but the film does not linger too much on stereotypes; instead, it revels in the medley of characters tripping over each other’s lives until a final, fatal fall.

Featuring young protégé Sylvia Sidney fresh from City Streets, and the first screen appearance of Beulah Bondi, who continued her role from the stage version as the cantankerous busybody, the simply staged film also provided the spark for many cinematic city visions, from Rear Window to Do the Right Thing. Even Alfred Newman’s original score—capturing the rhythmic essence of New York—took on a life of its own, reappearing in several films, including 1957’s How to Marry a Millionaire.