Das Nervenbündel

Mel Edison (Jack Lemmon) and his wife Edna Edison (Ann Bancroft) live lives of quiet desperation in an expensive yet shabbily constructed New York apartment with loud and obnoxious neighbors that they do not know nor do they want to know. Then Mel loses his job at age 48 after 22 years with the same firm. He says he was fired, but the modern term is laid off because it was not that he did something wrong, his employer, for whatever reason, just didn't need him anymore. So Mel's quiet desperation becomes louder as weeks turn to months and he can't find employment. Meanwhile, his wife has gone back to work and he feels less and less part of her life as she now comes home with the workplace stories instead of him. Will Mel ever find employment again? Will he ultimately crack up? Watch and find out.

This film just seems to try too hard with the voice over joke news flashes about what was modern urban life in the 1970s and the quirky extended family members. But the parade had passed it by with it seeming to retread ground first broken by All In the Family five years before. What saves it are the performances of the cast, and not just the main cast. Quite a few future famous actors have bit parts in this and it's a delight when they pop up. M.. Emmett Walsh is the apartment doorman. 1984 Best Actor Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham is a cab driver. And probably the funniest cameo appearance is unknown Sylvester Stallone as a young man who is chased through the streets of New York by an angry Mel, who thinks Stallone has stolen his wallet and he is determined to get it back.

When Mel is going to work and noticing that more and more of his coworkers are disappearing to the point where he is the last guy in the office, you might wonder why he didn't see the writing on the wall and go look for another job. After all it's easier to find another job when you still have one. The reason for this inaction is that this was made at a time when the concept of being "laid off" was a new one. From the end of WWII up until about 1970 you either got fired for being incompetent at your job or being dishonest or you had employment until you retired. That's an odd concept today when workers are perpetual - and pensionless - moving targets.

That moment of Anne Bancroft's is my favorite part of the entire film, often imitated where I used to work.

No one loves urban blight like Neil Simon, and no one depicts it as well. "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" goes much further than "The Out of Towners" because now, the leads (Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft) are actually living in a New York apartment, sleeping in 12 degree air conditioning in their bedroom during a heat wave and sweating everywhere else. Simon leaves nothing out: not having the right change for the bus, the elevator being out, no water, noisy neighbors, mean neighbors, a cheaply put together building, robberies in broad daylight, etc. Lemmon plays a 22-year veteran of a business who is fired, suffers a nervous breakdown, and goes into psychiatric care. His problems go beyond the loss of his job - he has to cope with his country dwelling brother Harry (Gene Saks) and his two sisters (Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley) who want to help but only succeed in being aggravating. Also, his wife has gone back to work as a production assistant and is never home.

This is really a comedy-drama that shows the enormous range of both actors. The beautiful Bancroft is great as an empty nester who tries to be supportive of her husband, who is losing it, as she goes toward the same territory; Lemmon is alternatively a riot, as annoying as Felix Unger, and as sad as his character in "Save the Tiger" while he attempts to work through his issues and find out who he is.

With a high rise at Second Avenue and E. 88th St. as a backdrop, "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" is timely today because it takes place during a recession. Suddenly, a lifestyle that wasn't so outrageous to begin with is hard to keep up, and nerves fray.

City dwellers won't find it difficult to relate to this film, and today, with jobs cuts and loss of income, nobody will. Lots of fun.

I must confess I have a bias for films of the seventies. Most of my all time favourite films were made in that decade and this is one of them.

Jack Lemmon is a New York middle executive who is retrenched. We watch as he slides into depression. Their is some fine humour in this film, which, incidentally was not well received critically, but it is really the underlying drama that makes this such a great film. It is an intensely personal film for me and, apart from some overacting, there is little I can criticise. It is an incisive and briskly paced comedy drama which I never tire of viewing.

By the way, watch out for cameos by pre-fame Sylvester Stallone and F. Murray Abraham.

Being a Jack Lemmon fan, I can't help but be biased when it comes to watching his films. But I have to say, even by Lemmon's standards, "Prisoner" is one of his finest performances. He displays a broad range of emotion as Mel Edison, a corporate exec who falls victim to the unemployment crisis of the seventies. Anne Bancroft is nicely cast as his wife, Edna--it's almost hard to believe watching this film that this is the same woman who played in "G.I. Jane" as a crooked senator. And, although another viewer here frowned upon the casting of Gene Saks' as Mel's brother Harry, I always enjoy seeing the director in front of the camera (Saks directed another of my faves, "The Odd Couple"). The direction is pretty tight, and the interludes between acts include humorous voice-overs from a fictional radio announcer (you'll have to listen closely to catch some of the jokes). Look for Sylvester Stallone in a cameo appearance. I heartily recommend this film to all Jack Lemmon fans, as well as to those who enjoy a good comedy that's not all slapstick and guffaws.

Worth a chuckle or more, this sometimes hilarious comedy hits a raw nerve with anyone who has lived in an apartment building where you can hear all the noise you never wanted to (at all sorts of hours), in a world that starts with listening to the radio news detail one horror after another.

That's the way the Broadway play started. The lights went out before the curtain opened and all you heard was a radio announcer delivering one crazy incident after another on the local news. That was the prologue to what you knew was about to follow. Then the curtains parted and the play began.

JACK LEMMON and ANNE BANCROFT play off each other brilliantly, but when all is said and done, there's just something missing in this Neil Simon comedy. The payoff that you should feel when the movie ends, just isn't there.

And yet, when you hear some of the news, it's almost quaint. Just think what was supposed to get a laugh: a news flash that a Polish freighter had just run into the Statue of Liberty. How tame!! Imagine what kind of news flash there would have been if this were written after 9/11.

Good supporting roles from Gene Saks, as Lemmon's brother, and Elizabeth Wilson and Florence Stanley as his sisters.

It may be lesser Simon, but it's still worth seeing, especially for New Yorkers.