Ray Salyer and Gorman Hendricks are two of the forgotten men in Lionel Rogosin’s unforgettable ON THE BOWERY
ON THE BOWERY (Lionel Rogosin, 1956)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art, Education and Research Building
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Thursday, November 29, and Friday, November 30, 1:30
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.ontheboweryfilm.com
One of the greatest documentaries ever made about New York City can now be seen in a recently restored 35mm print, offering a new look at an underground classic. Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery caused quite a stir upon its release in 1956, winning prizes at the Venice Film Festival while earning criticism at home for daring to portray the grim reality of America’s dark underbelly. After spending six months living with the poor, destitute alcoholics on Skid Row as research, idealistic young filmmaker Rogosin spent the next four months making On the Bowery, a remarkable examination of the forgotten men of New York, ne’er-do-wells who can’t find jobs, sleep on the street, and will do just about anything for another drink. Rogosin centers the film around the true story of Ray Salyer, a journeyman railroad drifter stopping off in New York City seeking temporary employment. Salyer is quickly befriended by Gorman Hendricks, who not only shows Salyer the ropes but also manages to slyly take advantage of him. Although the film follows a general structure scripted by Mark Sufrin, much of it is improvised and shot on the sly, in glorious black and white by Richard Bagley. The sections in which Bagley turns his camera on the streets, showing the decrepit neighborhood under the El, set to Charles Mills’s subtle, jazzy score and marvelously edited by Carl Lerner, are pure poetry, yet another reason why On the Bowery is an American treasure. The film is screening November 28 & 29 at 1:30 as part of MoMA’s continuing series “An Auteurist History of Film,” along with a pair of seminal silent shorts also set in New York City, Rudy Burckhardt’s 1953 Under the Brooklyn Bridge and Helen Levitt and James Agee’s 1952 In the Street; interestingly, Rogosin tried unsuccessfully to get Agee to work on On the Bowery and fired Levitt as the film’s editor.