On the Bowery

I wanted to watch this hoping to see a DOCUMENTARY! Raw unscripted footage of skid row in the 1950s is what this would be if the director had even a molecule of talent... well this "documentary" is not one at all, it portends to be a documentary, but rather a "docufiction"(?) uhh. WTF is that? No such thing!!! A term that shouldn't exists and that fact that it does somehow enrages me. The result is such a blunder that the film is next to worthless. How can you tell what's real and what's not? Nearly all of it looks phony to me, even the homeless people appear to be acting and playing to the camera.

On the Bowery (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Lionel Rogosin's first film is part documentary and part scripted story as we visit the Bowery, which at the time was one of the worst sections of New York. The film centers on a man who enters a bar and becomes mixed up with various drunks. The "documentary' aspect of the film gives us a little trip around the Bowery where we get to see various portions of the people who live there. ON THE BOWERY was nominated for an Academy Award and even over fifty-years later you can't help but be blown away by some of the images. I must admit that the scripted stuff was probably my least favorite but at the same time it was fascinating seeing these men in their daily lives. If you caught this movie on Turner Classic Movies there was some interesting details told by the host about the fate of some of the men involved. It's clear that none of them wanted help or an acting career so what we get here really does seem real and authentic. The shots of the Bowery were certainly very interesting to see today simply because you get to see what the place used to look like. There were some shorts made about the Bowery and of course everyone knows The Bowery Boys but this here is just so much more. The best stuff is actually the editing of the picture, which is quite remarkable and among the best I've ever seen. The flawless way the film and characters just flow from one scene to the next is pretty amazing to watch. It certainly doesn't hurt that the cinematography is top-notch from start to finish and it really captures the mood of these men and the Bowery.

A window into a time and a place, and more importantly, a way of being that's so different from other depictions of life in America in the 1950's that it deserves a watch, even if it's depressing. Embedded in the rather extraordinary images of alcoholics down and out on skid row is a loosely scripted story performed by the alcoholics themselves, so it's a blend of documentary and neorealist fiction. It elicits a degree of sympathy for Ray who wants to get off the bottle but finds he can't tolerate sleeping in the mission, but there's no sugarcoating here. Mostly what we see are men stumbling about in a stupor, laying out on the street, arguing loudly in a bar, or struggling to make it to their next drink. The older guy, Gorman, is fascinating as he spins tales about his past life as a surgeon and thinks of himself as an honorable guy, but meanwhile has no problem stealing from his buddy when he's passed out. One can't help but wonder how these people came to be in this condition, the larger picture of their lives and the system they grew up in. Maybe that was part of the point.

This movie must have seemed very startling to audiences at the time, when "homelessness" wasn't yet a concept (only the somewhat more abstract, accusatory "bums" or "winos").

Like many "documentaries" made before the 1960s, when a more purist approach was introduced, it is partly staged and acted, albeit by nonprofessional principals who were purportedly playing themselves, surrounded on real locations by real people who clearly aren't following any script. Thus the line between staged drama, improv and documentary is thoroughly blurred.

You could call this falsification by strict verite standards, but that would deny "In the Bowery's" extraordinary capture of a particular underside that mainstream society (let alone movies) preferred to ignore until the 60s myriad social-change movements focused more attention on the urban poor and disenfranchised.

The loose "story" focuses on ruggedly handsome thirtysomething ex-railroad worker Ray. He lands in NYC, buys drinks for some Bowery drunks, passes out on the street and has his threadbare suitcase of possessions stolen by Gorman, the one who'd befriended him. Ray does day-laboring gigs, attends a rescue mission sermon, sleeps at a charity flophouse (where most sleep on newspapers on the floor) and tries to avoid the demon alcohol--but he free-falls nonetheless.

It's worth reading the Wikipedia article about the movie, which offers a number of interesting facts about its creation and reception. (It won a Venice Fest award and an Oscar nomination, though the unflattering if poignant expose of Skid Row also got it attacked by the New York Times and other significant voices.) Supposedly Ray Salyer was "offered a Hollywood contract but chose to remain on the Bowery"--which sounds just-possible, but also unlikely enough to require further proof.

This is a unique and striking memento of a disappeared world (though the issues remain very relevant--only the neighborhoods and racial mix have changed).

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.