City Across the River

Sensitive study about the lives and loves of street gangs, their loyalties, and interactions with the police. Peter Fernandez is a bit too feckless as the protagonist, but all others are excellent in the supporting roles. Joshua Shelley and Tony Curtis are standouts. Worth watching

I can't remember exactly when I saw "City Across the River" but it was an awfully long time ago on television. But when "Saturday Night Fever" came out with its good guy-bad guy bands of friends who were sometimes dancing and sometimes raiding other gangs and it's last scene on the bridge, I thought, "This is a remake of 'City Across the River.'" We see the main characters of "City Across the River" as high students in a Brooklyn high school taking an industrial arts class. When they get a bit rowdy, the frustrated "shop" teacher yells, "I want it quiet!" One of the students sarcastically calls out in his Brooklyn accent, "Hey! Teach wants it quiet!" Another joins in, "Yeah! Teach wants it quiet!" Within a few seconds each in the entire classroom of students is banging on his shop project with a tool while chanting, "And a one and a two and a Teach wants it quiet. And a one and a two and a Teach wants it quiet!" as they march/dance in a circle around the shop tables. The high school principal arrives, demands the identity of the two ring leaders of this riot, and suspends them. Neither is to return without a parent. The two culprits approach the shop teacher after school and try to effect a reconciliation. "Come on. Gimme a break, would ya? My faddah's in jail and my muddah's gotta woik!" "Yeah, mine too. Give us a break, would ya?" When the shop teacher says it is out of his hands, the two students pull out a zip gun to threaten him. The zip gun goes off and Teach is dead. This is just one of a collection of problems Our Gang has as they are Staying Alive in Brooklyn. And the dance party hasn't even started yet.

Not only have I seen this movie but I also saw it being filmed -The location where it was shot was the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn NY - The picture was an adaptation of popular book of the time titled "The Amboy Dukes". Amboy Street was actually located in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. I guess the filmmakers didn't think Brownsville was seedy enough so they shot all exterior shots in Williamsburgh. Ironically my family lived in Brownsville before moving to Williamsburgh so you can see how the family fortunes were progressing. My mother had owned a candy store on Pennsylvania Ave. right across the street from Thomas Jefferson High School in Brownsville in the early 1940"s . The movie was shot around the corner from where I lived in Williamsburgh. I recall seeing some of the "gang" sitting in a small panel truck waiting for the set-up to be completed. Sitting there was Tony Curtis. I recall a crowd shot being filmed on Havemyer Street one night. The block was brightly lighted and I remember thinking that they needed an awful lot of light to film. When I actually saw the finished picture this scene was a day time sequence. What did I know. The film crew also placed a billboard on the building at the corner of South 2nd St. (where I lived) and Havemyer Street. "Happy Times Poolhall" it flashed. That billboard was still there months after filming but it reminded me of our brief connection with Hollywood every time I saw it. I sure would like to see this picture come out on DVD so I could constantly play it and see the "old neighborhood".

No matter how depressing this film appears to begin with, it's a great film and much ahead of its time. It's like a documentary probing the gang mentality of youngsters getting brought up to become good fellas and worse, and there are many aspects to the drama, one being that of the teachers, who really have a hard time and sometimes can't control their own classes. It's a social drama as well, Thelma Ritter has a poignant part as the worried mother, and Frankie's little sister has an important part also. Everything about the film is professional, and they are all convincing, from the poor people of the shabby back streets of Brooklyn to the policemen, the gangsters, and most striking of all is perhaps the character of "Crazy" whose real name is Theodore (Joshua Shelley), a fantastic clown with a penchant for cruelty. Tony Curtis has only a small minor part but is already Tony Curtis - it's like a hint at a prelude to his later great appearances. The final great dancing hall scene when things are getting really hot is a masterpiece in itself of polyphony bringing out all the true colours of the major actors including the leading gangster, fabulously contrasted against the fervent musicians and their frenzied music. Although I hesitated if I would see it through at all because of its dark depressive elements, I was finally deeply impressed - a great documentary film like all those "Naked City" films.

I lived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, NY and saw "City Across the River" after reading "The Amboy Dukes" when I was 13 years old, a very impressionable age. Tony Curtis was the rage and all the boys started combing their hair with the "Curtis look." At the time it seemed as if all of my contemporaries read the book, much like "God's Little Acre." The former because it described our lives in Brooklyn and the latter because of the "sexual" passages contained therein. It was a time of pegged pants, "ducks-ass" hairdos ala Curtis, stick and punch ball, athletic clubs, going to the 12 cent movies Saturdays at 12 o'clock to see a double feature, cartoons, the "chapter" (weekly serial), not getting caught with your feet on the tops of seats in front by the omnipresent white dressed matron, street gangs, zip guns and our beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. Immediately after seeing the movie, "the neighborhood" boys, from ages 13 to 16, vicariously adopted the nicknames of the characters in the movie according to their own personalities. As I recall, names were Crazy Shack, Bull Benson, etc. One of the things that sticks in my mind was the way the neighborhood kids, in order to show their machismo as depicted in the movie, would gather on street corners and lift the metal bus stop stands as dumb bell weights, with one arm and then the other. It was a great time and television was only seen if you looked in the window of the bar and grill around the corner on Flatbush Avenue and Winthrop Street.