(Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin, US 1953, 75 min.)
8:30 p.m. ON THE BOWERY
(Lionel Rogosin, US 1957, 65 min.)
In Little Fugitive, 7-year-old Joey (Richie Andrusco), thinking he’s killed his older brother, flees to Coney Island for a day’s worth of adventures. Cast with non-professionals, On the Bowery is a powerful study of life among the denizens of skid row. These two independently financed features by New York-based filmmakers each showcase authentic locations. Two films for one admission price.
Program Notes
Both On the Bowery and Little Fugitive were created in the 1950s with very limited budgets and by relatively unknown filmmakers. They are early examples of “independent film” and seminal works in the larger history of motion pictures. There are numerous definitions of independent cinema – Roger Ebert offers this one, “It’s a film made outside the traditional Hollywood studio system, often with unconventional financing, and it’s made because it expresses the director’s personal vision rather than someone’s notion of box-office success.” Some critics state that independent film began in 1977 with Eraserhead by David Lynch; some believe it is a John Cassavetes invention. The first independent film award was given to Mr. Cassavetes in 1959 by Jonas Mekas, but Cassavetes himself credits Lionel Rogosin, Morris Engel and Shirley Clarke as the first independent filmmakers.
In an essay published in Film Culture magazine in January of 1960, Cassavetes wrote, “I think the old filmmakers had one thing the new filmmakers should take into consideration, and that is that they liked people. They were interested in the epic quality of man, rather than the lessening of his ideals, showing how little morality and how little soul he had. The old filmmakers showed that everybody had a soul, even the most violent, evil people.” In an interview with Lillian Ross in the New Yorker (February, 1960) François Truffaut proclaimed, “Our New Wave would never have come into being if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with his fine movie, Little Fugitive.”
Little Fugitive is the story of a 7 year old Brooklyn boy and his impromptu and unchaperoned excursion to Coney Island. It was filmed on location using a portable 35mm camera designed by Morris Engel. Engel acted as cinematographer and one of three co-writer/director/producers of Little Fugitive. The charismatic star of the picture, Richie Andrusco, was actually discovered riding the merry-go-round at Coney Island. His performance is disarmingly innocent, completely unselfconscious and exposes the miraculous capacity of the amusement park to delight and enchant an imaginative little boy.
Another storied New York locale with a rich and colorful past is the setting for On the Bowery. The Bowery is a street sometimes known as Skid Row, the end of the line; where people go to dribble their lives away in a puddle of alcohol. On the Bowery is a film which is difficult to categorize, as it was photographed on location using real-life alcoholics and non-professional actors for its cast. Director Lionel Rogosin wrote, “We evolved the roles as a synthesis of the Bowery; we proceeded to look for men who would not only be what they were supposed to be acting, but men capable enough to perform before a camera.” The script was written only after the filmmakers had spent months mingling and immersing themselves with their future cast, absorbing the very particular experience of life on the Bowery. Rogosin also said, “The total reality of a community or a society is so vast that any attempt to detail its entirety would result in nothing more than a meaningless catalog of stale, factual representation – a result I call ‘documentary’.”
Many scenes were filmed live as the opportunities presented themselves, which resulted in some interesting challenges. When something filmworthy emerged, the crew would jump out of the car, set up the camera and begin to focus and frame. However, local business owners suspicious of the filmmaker’s motives, would frequently interrupt the shoot and the gear would have to be hastily packed away.
The indoor bar scenes would often be accomplished using a hidden camera. A full size 35mm camera with a 400 foot magazine of film would be stashed within a pile of rags on the bar and the camera operator, disguised as a typical Bowery habitué, would sit at the bar drinking and surreptitiously shooting film. These guerrilla methods enabled the filmmakers to capture an unrestrained perspective and credible documentation of daily existence in Bowery bars.
Little Fugitive received the Silver Lion award at the 1953 Venice Film Festival and was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar at the 1953 Academy Awards. On the Bowery received a BAFTA award for Best Documentary (1956), was nominated for a 1957 Oscar and was the first American film to take the Grand Prix Assoluto at the 1956 Venice Film Festival.
However, the films were misunderstood by many audiences and received mixed reviews in their time. The film critic for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther, delivered this review of Little Fugitive, “This small item, which was put together by a group of young folks whose previous experience had been as still photographers and freelance journalists, is essentially a documentation of juvenile fancy and caprice, hung upon a mere situation, with slight dramatic conflict and form. And what there is of the latter is so unskillfully performed that it does not bear criticism as a finished professional job.” And in his mostly unfavorable review of On The Bowery, Crowthers criticized the film by saying, “You can see the same thing in many places in this city without going too far from where you live.” Which is a comment that might be interpreted as a compliment today. But Crowthers also conceded to some of its attributes. “True, the candid photography of actual Bowery scenes—gin-mills, flop-houses, missions and drunk-cluttered doorways at dawn—is sharp and unrelenting… As a piece of straight documentation, On the Bowery makes a tough, arresting film.”
Little Fugitive and On the Bowery are now considered classics of independent cinema and 35mm prints of each are preserved in prestigious collections such as the film archive at George Eastman House and the Museum of Modern Art.
~Jennifer Miko, Student, L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation
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