On the Bowery

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.