On the Bowery at Film Forum

Back in September, Film Forum electrified New York audiences with a week-long run of the restored edition of Lionel Rogosin's cultishly loved 1956 On the Bowery. A mix of scripted scenes and hidden camera footage, the movie follows Ray Salyer, an itinerant railway worker, as he tries to fight off his alcoholic demons over a few short days living on the titular street, then New York's skid row and "the saddest and maddest street in the world." Rogosin spent months hanging out with the men who lived --- when they could afford to be off the street --- in the flophouses that once lined the Bowery, and he used only these men, not professional actors, in his film. On the Bowery is surrounded in legend, all of it true: the State Department pressured foreign governments not to allow the movie to be screened for fear of the damage it would do to the country's reputation; Gorman Hendricks, the drunk who tries to save Ray, kept himself alive for the filming, then binged his way to the grave just after the movie opened; and Salyer was offered a Hollywood contract but couldn't bring himself to leave the Bowery until one day he hopped a train west and disappeared into the great American nowhere.

The movie is back for another week, with scholars on hand this weekend to discuss its historical context. Last night, Suzanne Wasserman described the widely known changes that have taken place on the Bowery, now home to Whole Foods and $500/night hotels, but she also astutely noted that the area had already transformed by the time the movie came out: the Third Avenue El, which hangs like fate over the men in the film, closed in 1955. The movie is thus an important record of a vanished piece of New York, but for us its historical value is trumped by its aesthetic appeal. Rogosin's sympathetic direction and Richard Bagley's gorgeous photography make On the Bowery a haunting story of men at war with themselves.

Photo: thanks