The Street is a 1976 animated short film by Caroline Leaf, produced by the National Film Board of Canada.
A young Jewish boy lives with his family in an unnamed Canadian city. The short tells the story of the summer that the boy's maternal grandmother was dying. Members of the family react in different ways, and not all in the most noble ways—the boy's father doesn't particularly like having his dying mother-in-law in the home, and the boy is rather impatient for Grandma to die so that he can get the room.
The film was made using an innovative technique which involved painting the images on glass.
See it here
on the NFB's Youtube channel.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: The boy's uncle, a rabbi, notes how it doesn't seem right for someone to die on such a fine summer day. The room is now vacant, but the boy can't bring himself to take it.
- Brick Joke: When the boy talks about how he wants Grandma to croak so he can have her room, his older sister says that if he talks like that Grandma will come back and haunt him. The film then ends with the sister pretending to be the ghost of Grandma saying "Boyo...who's been sleeping in my bed?"
- The Film of the Book: Based on a short story by Mordecai Richler.
- Head-Turning Beauty: The boys of the neighborhood all notice the attractive nurse.
- Male Gaze: The boy's friends talk about how they'd like to hide under the stairs and look up the skirt of the attractive nurse who tends to Grandma.
- Nameless Narrative: "Grandma" isn't a name.
- Narrator: The boy as an adult, recalling the summer long ago when his grandma passed away.
- No Dead Body Poops: A variant. The boy's older sister, in an obvious attempt to gross him out, recounts the old Urban Legend about how a hanged man will have an orgasm. The boy is too young to know what an orgasm is.
- Non-Indicative Name: It's called "The Street", but other than the fact that the family does live on a street as opposed to an isolated farmhouse or whatever, the title has nothing to do with the narrative.
- Shout-Out: The mother listens to Lux Radio Theatre in the apartment.
