Street Angel

Street Angel is a 1928 American synchronized sound drama film. Although the film contains no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score and sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process. Directed by Frank Borzage, the film was adapted by Harry H. Caldwell (titles), Katherine Hilliker (titles), Philip Klein, Marion Orth, and Henry Roberts Symonds from the play Lady Cristilinda by Monckton Hoffe. As an early, transitional sound film, it used intertitles, recorded sound effects and musical selections, but did not include recorded dialogue. Street Angel was one of three films for which Janet Gaynor received the first Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929; the others were F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Borzage's 7th Heaven. The movie received two further Academy Award nominations at the 1930 ceremony for Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, making it one of two English-language films to receive Oscar nominations in separate years. The other was The Quiet One, nominated in 1949 for Documentary Feature and in 1950 for Story and Screenplay. Street Angel entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.