On The Bowery – The Films of Lionel Rogosin Volume 1 (1956-1964) 2 x Blu-ray
on May 8th, 2016 at 13:33
Artistic movements rarely travel in as straight a line as casual cultural historians like to imagine. Yes, American independent film flowered in the ’80s and ’90s in ways it hadn’t before, but there were non-Hollywood mavericks working in cinema long before then: in the avant-garde, in the underground, in regional pictures, in documentaries, in B-pictures, and occasionally in small-scale, personal versions of mainstream narrative films. One of the most influential was Lionel Rogosin, a committed social activist who took up filmmaking in the ’50s so he could tell the truth to the world about the evils of poverty, racism, and war. In 1955, Rogosin leapt into his new career by bringing his camera down to lower Manhattan, to try and capture both the desperation and the simple humanity of the impoverished alcoholics living on the streets and in flophouses. He quickly realized that mere reportage wouldn’t grab an audience, so in the spirit of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, Rogosin and his collaborators came up with a story, about a drifter named Ray (played by real-life skid-rower Ray Salyer) who loses everything while on a bender. The mix of scripted scenes, improvisation, melodrama, and portraiture offered a distinctly American take on neo-realism, proving to be a major inspiration to ’60s cinema verite and to the edgy psychodramas of John Cassavetes.
↓ Download movie...
Recent Comments