On the Bowery

On the Bowery
Film poster
Directed by	Lionel Rogosin
Produced by	Lionel Rogosin
Written by	Mark Sufrin (uncredited)
Starring	Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews, Ray Salyer
Music by	Charles Mills
Cinematography	Richard Bagley (uncredited)
Edited by	Carl Lerner
Distributed by	Milestone Films
Release dates	1956 (1956)
Running time	65 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

On the Bowery is a 1956 American docufiction film directed by Lionel Rogosin. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.^[1]

After the Second World War Lionel Rogosin made a vow to fight fascism and racism wherever he found it. In 1954 he left the family business (Beaunit Mills-American Rayon Corp.) in order to make films in accordance with his ideals. As he needed experience, he looked around for a subject and was struck by the men on the Bowery and decided that this would make a strong film. Thus On the Bowery was to be Rogosin's provocative film school that would prepare him for the filming of his anti-apartheid film: Come Back, Africa (1960).

In 2008, On the Bowery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot

The film chronicles three desperate days in a then impoverished lower Manhattan neighborhood, New York's skid row: the Bowery. It is the story of Ray (Ray Salyer), a railroad worker, who drifts on to the Bowery to have a drunken spree after a long bout of laying tracks and then falls in with a band of drunks who help him spend his money.

Ray, the "new guy on the Bowery," whose biceps still fill out his sleeves, looks preoccupied as he enters the "Confidence Bar & Grill". Surrounded by various alcoholics in advanced states of decay, he buys them rounds of drinks, then blacks out on his first night, and wakes up to discover that his suitcase has been stolen.

The thief (Gorman Hendricks) becomes the closest thing he has to a friend...and just like that, Ray embarks on a trip to hell, becoming part of the Bowery. In a series of Beckettian portraits, the protagonists, congregations of winos, listless listeners, blubber through numerous bar scenes, games of dominos around a flophouse stove, and a sermon at the Bowery Mission. Will Ray find his way out of this uncaring urban jungle?

Filming

Greatly influenced by Robert Flaherty and Italian neorealism tradition, Rogosin submerged himself on the Bowery for many months before filming. He got to know the street and the men intimately, befriending a Bowery man: Gorman Hendricks. Together they wandered through the Bowery for several months until Rogosin started filming himself with a hidden camera. Not satisfied with the result he then hired a commercial crew but decided that these attempts were not satisfactory.

At this time he was living in New York City's Greenwich Village and he frequently went to the White Horse Tavern where he met writer Mark Sufrin and cinematographer Dick Bagley (recently part of the crew of Sydney Myers The Quiet One). They got along right away and agreed to work with Rogosin. Shooting began with no script or story in July 1955. The first rushes were not working well, so that Rogosin, Sufrin and Bagley worked out a simple script based on the lives of the Bowery men.

In July 1955 Rogosin and his crew started filming. At this time the Third Ave El had ceased running on May 12 but demolition of that section had not yet started so the dark shadows the El cast on the Bowery were still present, adding to the dingy atmosphere. With these Bowery men, Rogosin quickly developed his own method of creating dialogue and improvisation.

The filming continued through October 1955 in a grueling schedule of long days and late nights. When the film was finished the first edit with editor Helen Levitt did not meet Rogosin's approval and he solicited the help of Carl Lerner.

Lerner was instrumental in pulling the film together according to Rogosin's vision, and he acted as mentor and editor, as Rogosin learned this aspect of his craft.

Cast

• Ray Salyer, the lead character in the film, was offered a Hollywood contract but chose to remain on the Bowery. Sayler was one of nine children born to a Methodist minister in Kentucky and raised in North Carolina.^[2] He had a twin brother named Roy, and at least one child also named Ray. Sayler reportedly died on October 6, 1963 in New York City.^[3] He is buried in North Carolina.^[4]
• Gorman Hendricks died weeks before the film opened. Rogosin helped both men and took care of Hendricks' burial.

Crew

• Dick Bagley
• Mark Sufrin
• Carl Lerner edited Rogosin's second film Come Back, Africa
• Darwin Deen, Assistant Cameraman and Second Camera Operator

Reception

In September 1956, Rogosin became the first American director to win the Best Documentary award at the Venice Film Festival with On The Bowery. Attacked by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times and shunned by the American Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce at the Venice Festival, Rogosin found support with the Flaherty family and many favorable reviews. In 1957, On the Bowery opened at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Despite this success, distribution was extremely difficult. With On The Bowery, Rogosin became one of the founding fathers in the development of Independent cinema in America, along with Sydney Myers and Morris Engel. On the Bowery would become an influence to many future independent filmmakers worldwide.

“..a film made from the inside...In the bars and on the sidewalks, the camera leans sympathetically across table or grating towards these men and women who have passed the point of no return, and have reached a hideous sort of happiness achieved at best by gin and whiskey, and at worst by a shared squeeze from a can of metal polish. We are with these people and we hear what they say. And Rogosin insists that we must love them; he seems to say, with Dostoyevsky, “the sense of their own degradation is as essential to those reckless unbridled natures as the sense of their own generosity.” —Basil Wright, Sight and Sound

“...brilliantly revealing photography by Richard Bagley matched to the patient, thoughtful construction and organization of director-producer Lionel Rogosin and writer Mark Sufrin...what stays in your mind permanently, striking you like a hammer when you first see it, is the face of the Bowery...the caked filth, the stubble beard, the clothes of eternity, the physical weakness and the shambling walk, and the unmistakable brand of liquor...” —Arthur Winston, New York Post

“...an extraordinary, agonizing document...filled with an overwhelming sense of veracity and an unvoiced compassion for the men who have surrendered their dignity for a drink” —Arthur Knight, Saturday Review

“This film, without the pity that secretly insults, without the disgust that indirectly compliments, studies its subjects with honest human interest, tries to see what they see in their lives, tries to find what they find in the bottom of the bottle.” —Time

Home media

Milestone Films released On the Bowery on DVD and Blu-ray in 2012.^[5]

Awards

• Grand Prize in the Documentary and short film Category, Venice Film Festival, 1956
• British Film Academy Award, “The Best Documentary of 1956”
• The Robert Flaherty Award 1957
• Nominated for an Academy Award 1957^[6]
• Gold Medal Award, Sociological Convention, University of Pisa 1959
• Selected as one of the “Ten Best Movies of Ten Years Between 1950-59” by Richard Griffith, Museum of Modern Art Film Library
• Festival of Popoli, 1971

See also

• List of docufiction films

References

Further reading

• "Village-Made Bowery Film Wins Top Prize at Venice". The Village Voice. September 12, 1956.
• Balaban, Dan. "Bowery Films Star: Ray Salyer on the Way From Here to.... ?". The Village Voice. March 27, 1957. pp. 1 and 12.

External links

• Milestone Films' On the Bowery website
• On the Bowery at the Internet Movie Database
• On the Bowery at Turner Classic Movies Movie News