Screen capture from the 1948 “In the Street”
When “In the Street” was first screened in 1948, it was unusual in several ways: it was a silent film created two decades after Hollywood jettisoned the silent format for talkies, it was a view of New York’s Spanish Harlem at a time when mainstream movies ignored the growing urban Hispanic population, and it offered an unprecedented view of daily life without the benefit of a preconceived screenplay.