Review of On the Bowery by Rogosin

This was the first film I've seen about NYC history that deviates from the Ric Burns documentary about NYC. I've seen that film I don't know how many times, but it has served as the basis for my knowledge of NYC over the course of several decades. It was the earliest film I can recollect about addiction and living homeless or down and out.  I'm currently writing a screenplay about the drug trade and the criminal element that has grown up around it. This film serves as a basis about addiction depictions in film.

I thought this film really hit a nerve. I've been down to the Bowery and Chinatown and Little Italy and it is not as bad as this film makes it out to be. On my last trip down to the Bowery there were high rise apartments and luxury hotels. A far cry from it's reputation as the "skid row" of NYC. I guess that's a good thing the drunks and junkies will have to find a new place to cavort. The film was good, it was short, but still stung a stinging blow in terms of social realism. The drunks depicted in this short film are just as bad as any depicted in Jack Kerouac's On the Road or other novel of hobos, drunks, and other sorts. In fact I imagined this film as a Jack Kerouac novel on film. I've read a few Kerouac novels and this seems like a depiction of one of them.

The narrative of this film is dire. There are no happy endings. One presumes that the drunkard gets out alive, but who knows? For all we know he ends back on skid row vying for his next drink. The film's action never really veres into high intensity. There is a scene when the leading man ends up passed out on the street, his suitcase stolen from him, with no where to go. It is a gritty scene, but it is very short.

The most gritty scenes are where the cabal of drunkards is scheming for it's next drink. They manipulate the new guy in town; they get him to buy a bottle f wine, steal his suitcase, then leave him for dead in the street. There is a brief respite in the Bowery Mission, yet he is still alone, alcholic and destitute.

The film is one of social poignancy. Questions of prohibition ran through my mind as I watched the film. The questions about legalizing booze had been settled years ago. Yet, the questions of addiction and destitution were still lively topics as this film shows. I suppose this film could be updated to the debate about legalizing drugs. That topic is still up in the air. And the Bowery is a much cleaner place to date.