Die Bowery - Straße auf der Schattenseite New Yorks

As I read the admiring comments about this movie, I find myself confused. Yes, this is an excellent documentary -- and the question of whether some scenes may have been staged bothers me less than it does another commenter. Yet, good as it is, this sort of documentary did not spring newborn from the mind of Lionel Rogosian, like Athena from Zeus' brow. There are clear antecedents, like the photography of Walker Evans and even movies like Boris Kaufman's LES HALLES CENTRALES (1927).

In many ways it is a remake of the 1941 Passing Parade short THIS IS THE BOWERY, without the voice over commentary. Instead, it reserves its commentary to its cinematic choices: the editing that cuts faster and faster as arguments rage and the uncredited photographer, who carefully composed and key lit portrait shots that scream "This is a human being", Film is a medium that can lie or tell the truth twenty-four times a second, but which lies or truths the film maker chooses to tell.... that's the real point.

Having thus demonstrated my learnedness and balance as a film critic, let me turn again and note that such issues are irrelevant. A movie is made for an audience, and how would this movie strike its audience, who probably could not recall having ever seen anything like it before? Like a thunderbolt. This sort of cinema vérité film making was something usually seen in post-war Italian movies where the producer couldn't afford a studio. To see it applied to reality in the United States was devastating and changed documentary film-making permanently. At least, until the next new and greatest thing came along.

I guess this is the grandfather of mumblecore. It's mostly a loosely scripted film of men about to get drunk, actively drunk, or previously drunk aimlessly wandering the streets and living the general life of a homeless person in 1950s NYC. Most of the "conversations" are old guys arguing over nonsensical topics that are hard to even understand because they are all so inebriated. At barely over an hour, this is probably the perfect length for a movie that's not about anything other than a picture of lost people who inhabit a geographic location at a certain period of history.

Watched on Kanopy.

The film sells itself as a documentary. It is really a film of re-enactments and scripted moments. I do not deny that they used real "bums" in this film, but they are conscious of the camera and the words that they say seem to follow a specific storyline. The big giveaway that this is not a natural documentary are all the camera angles used...there are several different ways single scenes were shot that signifies a camera setup had to be changed during the filming of the scene. Of course, the biggest distraction were the inserted close-ups of the men...it meant that a camera was shoved right in front of their faces...they had to be quite aware that they were being filmed...and thus, a documentary filmaker would no longer get reality.

On The Bowery is quite strange to watch, considering the odd feeling one gets when watching this film. Is it unscripted? Is this really what happens? In the end, the film feels like a confabulated lie, one that shouldn't have been identified as a certain extreme. As a piece of fictionalized reality, this film does feel rather decent in its context. Sadly, only history will dictate how this movie is percieved, and even then, it will still be a perception that is not quite correct.

This film had tremendous influence on documentary film making and in many ways is still ahead of its time. John Cassavetes, the great American independent director, once said that Rogosin is "probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." "Wait a minute," you might say, "that isn't what I was taught in film school!" To understand that quote, and the impact of "On the Bowery," you would have to understand the world of documentary film making in the 1950's.

Robert Flaherty, and Walter Ruttmann were the people who had largely shaped what documentary film making had become in the 50's. Flaherty had shown us natural people in natural settings. This in itself was not new, but his mastery of film skills raised the documentary to an art form. His images were beautiful and haunting, and that eventually became the norm for good documentaries. Ruttmann, in his film "Berlin; Symphony of a Great City," photographed a day in the life of Berlin, and edited it to match the structure of a symphony. Once again we saw the marriage of documentary and high art. This was copied by Dziga-Vertov (who is often given credit for Ruttmann's innovations) in his "Man with a Movie Camera" and by others.

There were, of course, other influential film makers. There is, for example, a tradition of political films and propaganda pieces that are often thought of as documentaries. But in discussing non-political, documentaries in the world of 1957, they were generally highly aesthetic, and usually about fairly safe subjects such as native people, famous scientists, animals etc. The films were sometimes scripted, and a representative story (not a real story) of the lives of the people was done using native non-professional actors. "On the Bowery" can be seen as a transitional piece between the Flaherty school and modern documentaries, On one hand it is aesthetic, and contains some script, but on the other, it is mostly unscripted. The film also has a strong feel of reality. This is because the people in the film were going through their daily routine rather than acting. Instead of coming up with a representative story, the scripted parts of the film are recreations of a specific, real story, played by the person who lived it. It is interesting to note that after the film was shown the main character was offered $40,000 and a Hollywood film contract. He refused it and went back to the Bowery. I do not know what became of him. Doc, (who had been a real doctor at one time) stayed on the Bowery and died of a heart attack shortly after the film.

Because it is partly scripted, it is often misunderstood as being fictional, but Rogosin methods reflect this connection with reality. He spent 6 months studying and observing, then a year and a half filming. You don't need to spend a year and a half to film a fictional script. I attended a screening of the film in the 60's put on by Rogosin and was able to ask him some questions. The scripted scenes came out of the the real life events that occurred during the filming, not the other way around. "On the Bowery" is clearly the breakthrough film that that paved the way for today's documentary style.

Another breakthrough occurred with the subject of the film and the way it was treated. Instead of animal life, native people, or a famous person, the subject was alcoholics on New York's skid-row. This was pretty much unheard of at the time except in the political/propaganda type of documentary. But unlike the political documentary, there was no comment or judgment or manipulation of the footage to lead you to a conclusion that the film maker wanted you to have. As an audience member you feel free to interpret it as you like, and many people had different ideas of what it meant. In doing this Rogosin is ahead of his time even today.

In an article in "Film Culture" 1960, "Interpreting Reality (Notes on the Esthetics and Practices of Improvisational Acting)", Rogosin gives his "Manifesto" for documentary film making. Although he respects Flaherty and his school he feels that they are not actually making documentaries. Also he rejects true documentaries as being a, "meaningless catalog of stale, factual representation," and even says that he does not make documentaries. Instead he wanted to spontaneously film elements of reality and "put it in a form that would capture the imaginations of others." This is not the same as making a representative story. The scripted scenes in "On the Bowery" are made from the actual experiences of the people in the film. They are being recreated by the people who lived them. This clearly sets him apart from even modern documentary film makers.

Another thing that still sets Rogosin apart is that he gives his characters dignity. It is very easy for a documentary film maker to ridicule people, or show them in a bad light, especially because they no way to make a rebuttal to the audience viewing the film. Modern documentary film makers too often fall into this trap. Rogosin's effort was just the opposite. "I want to give man a new dignity, to make a true national hero of a Nebraska farmer, a Pennsylvania coal miner, a Harlem taxi driver," Rogosin says in his 1960 article. He certainly succeeds in doing this in "On the Bowery." You walk out of the theater with a sense that these people have a certain nobility in their lives; that they are not caricatures but distinct individuals. Not an easy job, considering the subject matter.

"On the Bowery" was a groundbreaking film, but it is also a film that is still unique in its vision of what a documentary film should be. Even today it is ahead of its time.