Critical Reception
When the film was released the staff at Variety magazine wrote, "A double-barreled gangster film, The Street with No Name ranks at the top of the list of documentary-type productions which have been rolling out of the 20th-Fox lot. This pic has a lean, tough surface wrapped around a nucleus of explosive violence. Beneath its documentary exterior there lies a straight melodrama that harks back to the great gangster films of the early 1930s...Along a continuous line of fresh details, film includes a crackerjack fight sequence between Stevens and a professional pug, a glimpse into the FBI machinery, and a slambang finale in which the cops and the hoodlums shoot it out in an industrial plant. In a secondary role, Lloyd Nolan, playing the same Inspector Briggs of the FBI of The House on 92nd Street, delivers with his usual competence."
More recently, critic Dennis Schwartz wrote, "William Keighley (Bullets or Ballots/G Men) ably directs in a no-nonsense manner this semi-documentary styled crime drama, while Harry Kleiner provides the taut script; it follows in the authentically atmospheric territory carved out by The House on 92nd Street (1945). The film noir gets its colorful flavorings from star Richard Widmark playing another psychopathic killer like he did in Kiss of Death...The film's main purpose is to tell in an entertaining fashion how efficient the FBI is and how dangerous is their work. But the film is well-acted, has terrific shadowy visuals courtesy of Joe MacDonald, frighteningly conveys the feeling of a corrupt city, and never pretends to be anything more arty than a good cops and robbers action film. On those merits, it's watchable."
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