NFR Project: 'On the Bowery' (1957)

 

NFR Project: “On the Bowery”

Dir: Lionel Rogosin

Scr: Mark Sufrin

Pho: Richard Bagley

Ed: Carl Lerner

Premiere: 1956

65 min.

This uncompromising look at the lives of alcoholics living on the street in lower Manhattan is a tough watch. Anyone who has suffered or who knows someone who has suffered from alcoholism will find this familiar territory.

The film was the idea of Lionel Rogosin, who quit his job as a chemical engineer and began to work as a filmmaker. He wanted to make a movie about apartheid, but he chose this project first as a training exercise. He intended to indict capitalist society by showing what effects it had on the down and out. What he ended up with, however, was a simple and daunting profile of men at the end of their ropes.

The movie, shot in stark black and white, covers the lives of three men – Ray, a relatively young wanderer; Gorman, a veteran of the alleys; and Frank, who collects cardboard to make money and dreams of living in the South Seas. All three careen from bar to bar, and hit the streets, looking for day work or handouts that will fuel their drinking. Ray plans to give up the booze and get his life together, but fails miserably, time and again. Gorman, inured to the life, offers help and advice but can’t improve his own lot.

We follow Ray as he goes into a mission to get a meal, a bath, and a bed. He is forced to listen to a sermon and then given food and space on the floor to sleep. He abruptly leaves the mission and goes out drinking again. Gorman shares money with him that Gorman got by stealing Ray’s suitcase and selling all his belongings. Ray swears he will change his life this time – but by film’s end, we see him standing on a street corner, staring glassily into the distance.

Gorman died of cirrhosis before the film debuted. Ray lived only to 1963, also succumbing to the illnesses of alcoholism. The hopelessness of those who live only for the next drink is brutally illuminated. It will serve as a corrective to anyone thinking about ending their sobriety.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Paths of Glory.