FILM & VIDEO

Home > FILM & VIDEO > On the Bowery

• Tweet
• Outlook
• ICAL
• PRINT
• Email
• Feedback

• RSS

• Official Website
• Buy Tickets
• Add to My Favorites

On the Bowery

Presented by Austin Film Society at Alamo Drafthouse - Downtown

May 11, 2011

Add Review/Comment
Comment on Facebook

This screening will be accompanied by “The Perfect Team” (2009) a short examining the history of the Bowery and the making of ON THE BOWERY—carefully and lovingly made by Rogosin’s son, Michael.

Produced and directed by Lionel Rogosin
Written by Lionel Rogosin, Richard Bagley, and Mark Sufrin
Original music by Charles Mills; Edited by Carl Lerner
1956, USA, 35mm print restored by Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, released in US by Milestone Films (2011), B&W and tinted, 65 min.

Lionel Rogosin was a mid-century pioneer documentarian whose credo was to make films “from the inside.” When he chose to shoot a doc/drama hybrid on Manhattan’s infamous Bowery, he was extremely compassionate toward his subjects, while the era was callous or even hostile toward the so-called “Bowery bums” and “winos.” Few New Yorkers wandered into the Bowery area below 4th Street unless they were looking for a cheap drink, a flophouse, and a street community of fellow alcoholics who wouldn’t judge them.

Rogosin probably knew that even fewer people would want to watch a film about these men (and a few women), but that didn’t stop the director from studying the Bowery, spending a lot of time there, getting to know some of the local men and locations, and then taking his unobtrusive camera into their lives. Rather than creating pure cinema verite, he mixed a lot of very candid shots and moments in with a loosely scripted “story” about a young man, Ray, who has just left a job laying railroad tracks and now finds himself down and out on the Bowery. He still looks young and strong, with no signs of alcoholism yet creasing his face or sagging his body, but he is easy prey for older guys who need to cadge a drink of muscatel, the favored wine of the Bowery. Soon, Ray has fallen in with them and begins his downward spiral, with an occasional job on the side, unbalanced by too much drinking in the bars and sleeping on the streets.

But the story is simply a thread which stitches together an array of astounding shots and scenes captured in wonderful chiaroscuro cinematography – craggy, wasted, poignant faces caught in diffused light coming in through dirty windows or harsh light cast by unforgiving neon. Rogosin could be considered the Caravaggio of the Bowery, as his camera picks out faces we might be reluctant to look at in real life, but in the safety of a theater, we can trace every line, nook, and cranny of faces battered by life and wine. We might not want to know them or listen to their stories for long, but we can thank Rogosin for taking us on an amazing journey into a little known society. He also established a style that spoke to later directors like John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese, as well as legions of documentary filmmakers looking for truths.

Son of immigrant parents who had financially thrived in New York, Lionel Rogosin was dramatically changed by his experiences in World War II and wanted to do more with his life than run a clothing factory. With a humanistic outlook, he discovered the humanity beneath the grime of the alcoholics on the Bowery and decided to tell a different kind of story than those found in standard Hollywood fare of the time. Quitting his job, he invested $60,000 of his own money (a sizable mid-century sum), bought a new light-weight 35mm camera, and set to work chronicling a variety of scenes in the bars, soup kitchens, cheap hotels, and missions and on the streets of the blighted area. He captured hundreds of unscripted moments. As is so often said today, this is truly compelling cinema.

When his footage was all cobbled together in an effective structure, Rogosin had produced an outstanding film which was honored at the Venice Film Festival and nominated for Best Feature Documentary by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but mainstream critics like Bosley Crowther of the New York Times referred to it as “sordid and pitiful,” completely missing the point of this new kind of American neo-realism in documentary form. I would guess Bosley always had his chauffeur avoid the Bowery. -- Chale Nafus

In 2008, ON THE BOWERY was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.