A group of straphangers are terrorized by thugs in Larry Peerce’s THE INCIDENT
THE INCIDENT (Larry Peerce, 1967)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
January 16-17
Series continues through January 31
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.com
One of the ultimate nightmare scenarios of 1960s New York City, Larry Peerce’s gritty black-and-white The Incident takes viewers deep down into the subway as two thugs terrorize a group of helpless passengers. Joe Ferrante (Tony Musante) and Artie Connors (Martin Sheen, in his first movie role) are out for kicks, so after getting some out on the streets, they head underground, where they find a wide-ranging collection of twentieth-century Americans to torture, including Arnold and Joan Robinson (Brock Peters and Ruby Dee), Bill and Helen Wilks (Ed McMahon and Diana Van der Vlis), Sam and Bertha Beckerman (Jack Gilford and Thelma Ritter, in her last role), Douglas McCann (Gary Merrill), Muriel and Harry Purvis (Jan Sterling and Mike Kellin), Alice Keenan (Donna Mills), soldiers Felix Teflinger and Phillip Carmatti (Beau Bridges and Robert Bannard), and others, each representing various aspects of contemporary culture and society, all with their own personal problems that come to the surface as the harrowing ride continues. It’s a brutal, claustrophobic, highly theatrical film that captures the fear that haunted the city in the 1960s and well into the ’70s, with an all-star cast tackling such subjects as racism, teen sex, alcoholism, homosexuality, war, and the state of the American family. The rarely shown drama, some of which was filmed in the actual subway system against the MTA’s warnings, is screening at Film Forum January 16-17 in a double feature with Anthony Harvey’s Dutchman as part of the three-week festival “New Yawk New Wave,” comprising seminal independent films made in and about New York City; among the other double features in the series are Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary and Milton Moses Ginsberg’s Coming Apart, Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Andy Warhol’s My Hustler, Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Who’s That Knocking at My Door, and Brian De Palma’s Greetings and Hi, Mom!