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.

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).

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.

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.