COME BACK, AFRICA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Astonishing Milestone Film&Video BluRay

Can you imagine making a film about Apartheid - in secret, in South Africa - while Nelson Mandela is, at the very same time, on trial for treason? Such a film was made and if one is able to declare that shooting a film can be an act of bravery, then legendary filmmaker Lionel Rogosin might be cinema's greatest hero of all. In fact, the risks taken by all those involved in creating the film Come Back, Africa were so fraught with danger that even now, it's impossible to look at it without gasping with awe and horror in equal measure. Created over a period of two years, Rogosin's film remains the most important film ever made to depict the horrendous regime of Apartheid. Available on the visionary Milestone Film and Video label - such a must-own item that if you were to buy only one movie this year, this would have to be it.

Miriam Makeba: one of South Africa's greatest female vocalists had never been heard outside her country until Lionel Rogosin managed to get her out to attend the film's World Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival.

Come Back, Africa (1959) *****
Dir. Lionel Rogosin
Starring: Zacharia Mgabi, Vinah Bendile, Miriam Makeba, Myrtle Berman

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"...the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." - John Cassavetes

"...a film of terrible beauty, of the ongoing life it captured and of the spirit embodied by Rogosin and his fellow artists.” - Martin Scorsese on Lionel Rogosin's Come Back, Africa

Rogosin's footage was shot in secret.
A Child Labourer in the Diamond Mines
of South Africa under the Apartheid Regime.

Nobody made movies like Lionel Rogosin. His first feature film On the Bowery broke every rule in the book and in so doing, created a whole new set of rules that inspired and defined filmmaking for over half a century including the likes of John Cassavetes, John Schlesinger, Karel Reizs, Richard Lester and Martin Scorsese (not to mention a myriad of documentary directors).

Rogosin's brilliant approach - an amalgam of Flaherty, Italian Neo-Realism and his own unique method - resulted in what could be called docudrama, though even that word seems too inconsequential to describe how he made movies.

After seeing Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (AKA The Bicycle Thief), Rogosin gave up his career as an engineer. He had to make movies - movies that captured the reality of the times and most of all, to give voice to the disenfranchised through the art of cinema.

On The Bowery (a link to my review is at the end of this piece) examined the harrowing Post-War existence of skid-row alcoholics on the Bowery of Manhattan. Come Back, Africa would employ his style even further to examine the lives of Black Africans in South Africa under the horrendous regime of Apartheid. Travelling to South Africa with his pregnant wife, Rogosin spent six months getting to know people - both Black and White - who could generously provide an opportunity for him to observe what life was like under Apartheid. (Rogosin took a similar approach with On the Bowery, spending months on skid-row.)

Lionel Rogosin on-set: making reality.

Based on people he met, locations he viewed, numerous shocking (as well as inspiring and positive) incidents he witnessed and generally just soaking up everything he could, Rogosin put together a treatment of what shape his film would take and eventually collaborated with two Black journalists/activists Lewis Nkosi and William Modisane on a screenplay.

Casting the film with non-actors who were as close in reality to the kinds of people written as "characters" (real domestics, diamond mine workers, unskilled general labourers, etc.) and continually bamboozling the White South African officials into thinking he was producing a travelogue, Rogosin began to shoot the film proper. Casting the White African characters was a bit trickier, but as he'd connected with numerous people who secretly despised Apartheid, he was able to get those actors as well.

What we experience is simply and utterly astonishing. There is no other film quite as extraordinarily detailed in the depiction of life under Apartheid - in the very country, amongst the actual locations, with real people and during the horrendous early years of a regime in which segregation and racism were actually legislated (and where men like Mandela were paying dearly for their human rights stances). In addition to shooting all over Johannesburg, Rogosin was afforded the amazing opportunity to shoot in the Black townships. In fact, much of these scenes are set in Sophiatown which was actually being levelled during the shooting to eventually build a swanky White-Only suburb.

ZACHARIAH'S DEVASTATION

The tale told is a simple one, but it reflects the actual events and experiences all Blacks lived through in South Africa. This "simple" story is our conduit into the very lives of the people during this time. We see a man forced to leave his wife and kids behind in their country village and work in a diamond mine. With wages withheld (and not very good to begin with), he's forced to ask his wife to sell some of their livestock so he can actually have money to live on. We experience what life is like as a domestic servant with a racist White housewife - screaming at the man constantly, using the most ugly racial epithets one can imagine. We're party to Black workers being fired by racists, endless demands by police for paperwork and passes, the "White-Only" and "Black-Only" segregation, squalid living conditions, brutal back-breaking work, child labour, raids and arrests upon those without the proper paperwork and even the rape and murder of a woman whose husband is stupidly detained by officials and not home to protect his wife.

There are, of course, wonderful things - the vibrancy and music of the people in the townships away from their oppressors and amongst each other, the late night gatherings of intelligent political discussion mixed with spirits, music and even dancing and yes, we even meet one White person who is a genuine, caring human being (though sadly and apologetically forced to do something he'd rather not do - yes, White people could be detained, beaten, jailed and/or charged with treason).

And here was Lionel Rogosin, his pregnant wife and a handful of European crew members living in this madhouse called South Africa and actually making a film that would secretly expose life under Apartheid for the rest of the world to see - working collaboratively with a local cast and crew who were risking EVERYTHING to make this film a reality. The shooting days began at 5AM and often didn't end until 11PM - everyday for well over a month, constantly shifting locales and working in secret. Every couple of days, Rogosin would make mad dashes to the airport to put his footage on airplanes to New York and one night, on a particularly treacherous road, was rammed head-on by another car. Miraculously, his wife didn't miscarry and their first child was born in South Africa.

I've watched this film several times since I received the Blu-Ray. During every single viewing I'm stunned. My jaw drops, my heart soars and my tears flow. All I will do now is reiterate:

Nobody, but nobody made films like Lionel Rogosin.

The art of cinema and indeed, the world, owes him a huge debt of gratitude. Come Back, Africa is a bonafide masterpiece - it's one of the greatest films of all-time.

Come Back, Africa is part of the Milestone Film and Video "Milestone Cinematheque" series and Volume II of the ongoing collection entitled "The Films of Lionel Rogosin" (Volume I is the aforementioned On The Bowery). This is an extraordinary two-disc Blu-Ray set, chock-full of valuable extra feature. Disc 1 includes the full feature film Come Back, Africa, restored by the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna and gorgeously transferred from the 2K restoration. The feature includes SDH subtitles and a wonderful Martin Scorsese Introduction. As if this wasn't enough, we get the outstanding Michael Rogosin/Lloyd Ross 64-minute documentary entitled An American in Sophiatown: The making of Come Back, Africa, an astonishing 20-minute radio interview with Lionel Rogosin discussing Come Back, Africa and the movie's theatrical trailer. Disc Two is just as extraordinary and I'll be reviewing it in separate article.

In the meantime, feel free to read my original review of Rogosin's On the Bowery by clicking HERE and if you do not own either of the Milestone Rogosin films, feel free to click on the Amazon links (options available for Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and Amazon.UK) below and order straight from here. Ordering from this site allows for modest returns that assist with the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY Come Back, Africa - HERE!

In Canada - BUY Come Back, Africa HERE, eh!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY Come Back, Africa - HERE!

LIONEL ROGOSIN: GIVING VOICE - "ARAB ISRAELI DIALOGUE" How and Why this Important Dialogue MUST Absolutely Continue - By Greg Klymkiw

"Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." - John Cassavetes

The immortal groundbreaking work
of the late documentary filmmaker Lionel Rogosin
yielded a bounty that influenced the generations who followed him.
His last film, "ARAB ISRAELI DIALOGUE"
is now on the verge of a major restoration to
continue the dialogue he began in 1974.

Lionel Rogosin - Giving Voice
ARAB ISRAELI DIALOGUE - How and Why the Dialogue MUST Continue

By Greg Klymkiw

Cinema and indeed, mankind as a whole, owes a debt of gratitude to the late filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. Inspired by the Italian neorealist movement and in particular, the work of Vittorio (Bicycle Thieves) DeSica as well as the groundbreaking docudrama by Robert (Nanook of the North) Flaherty and Lewis Milestone's evocative film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Rogosin created an important body of work. He gave voice to the disenfranchised in a style that built upon his chief influences and his own life experience experience whilst developing a unique style that was all his own.

Rogosin influenced such diverse talents as John Cassavetes (Shadows), Martin Scorsese (Who's That Knocking at My Door?) and the realist vérité of UK's "Angry Young Man" genre, including John Schlesinger (Terminus, Midnight Cowboy). The list, frankly goes on. Even filmmakers influenced by those influenced by Rogosin - whether they worked in drama, documentary or docudrama - benefited, continue to benefit and will forever benefit from his work and style. Rogosin's legacy is boundless and as long as there are motion pictures, so many future filmmakers will create their work in ways that sprung from the very roots of Lionel Rogosin (whether they realize it or not).

There is, however, a missing piece to all this.

Arab Israeli Dialogue, Rogosin's final film, was never properly completed in a manner that would have allowed the dialogue to continue in cinematic form. Lacking funds before his death to continue this important exploration, we're left with his important work from 1974, but there was so much left to discover through his lens up until his death in 2000 and beyond. This is a piece of cinema that is most likely needed now more than ever. In these times of political and economic upheaval due to the cumulative effects of a seemingly never-ending war that's been going on as long as the Crusades, it is a conflict that has reached critical levels during the past century (and most specifically during the past decade and a bit). I'd suggest that without further dialogue it's not a stretch to assume that life as we know it may be altered forever, and in many ways, already has been.

We need this film desperately and for a pittance it can be restored, expanded and, in a sense - finished.

It MUST be finished.

Rogosin's importance to cinema has seldom been paralleled. He pioneered the forward movement of cinéma vérité (using the camera to provoke reality by blending "fly-on-the-wall" direct cinema with stylized approaches and specific set-ups that utilize overt narrative technique), and thus forged a path that opened up a whole world of great filmmaking. I'd argue strenuously that without Rogosin, things might well have been a lot different. The art form, the genre of documentary itself might not have easily yielded the work subsequently provided by the likes of Sinofsky/Berlinger, Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield, Ulrich Seidl, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault, Allan King, Albert/David Maysles, Alan Zweig, Peter Lynch, D.A. Pennebaker, Fredrik Gertten, Barbara Kopple and frankly, a list that could stretch on for a few more miles.

John Cassavetes declared: "Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time."

Indeed, Rogosin was poised for greatness through his life experience. He earned a degree in Chemical Engineering at Yale and was going to join his father's textile firm. World War II interrupted these career plans and he ended up serving in the Navy. His harrowing participation in the war affected him deeply - especially after the war, when he travelled through the debris of a decimated Europe. Returning to America, he did not stay with his father's firm long, deciding to pursue his interest in human rights, activism and cinema.

His ultimate goal was to create work that would benefit mankind.

His first film was the immortal On The Bowery wherein he focused his lens upon the post-war lives of America's forgotten men, many of whom lived in the squalor of the Bowery in New York City - a former upscale neighbourhood that transformed - almost overnight - into a worldwide symbol of urban blight. Seedy hotels, flophouses, pawn shops, soup kitchens and sleazy taverns became the lifeblood of the district. Attracting a generation-or-three of men who had suffered through war, these aimlessly shell-shocked victims of American prosperity and might, eked out a living as seasonal and migratory labourers - many of whom "rode the rails", risking the brutality of rail bulls, a criminal element and even incarceration. They sought cheap rent and cheap booze to drown their pain and sorrow. Blowing their earnings on potent mescal and beer chasers, a lot of them couldn't even afford flea-bitten flophouses and lived on the street.

The Bowery ran rampant with homelessness and Rogosin was there to indelibly capture it on film. For the rest of his filmmaking career, his commitment to artistically exposing humanity on the fringes became his badge of honour.

He was also committed to exposing audiences to the finest cinema and to this end, he was the founder, owner and programmer of New York's legendary Bleecker from 1960 until its untimely demise in the early 90s. (I am often elated and saddened at the same time that a film I produced, Guy Maddin's Archangel, was one of two feature films (the other being Todd Haynes's Poison) to be the cinema's final showing. Woody Allen fans will have experienced the cinema when scenes involving movie-watching occurred in Allen's films - he not only shot the scenes there, but loved the cinema dearly.

In fact, Arab Israeli Dialogue was shot in the basement of the cinema itself.

Those who care about cinema have a chance to participate directly in the important legacy of Lionel Rogosin.

There is a new initiative as mentioned above to continue Rogosin's work with respect to his final work. Spearheaded by his son, (a director-producer in his own right) Michael Rogosin (and in partnership with editor and videographer Adrian Rothschild), I urge you to contribute to the online Kickstarter campaign for this cinematic exploration of Lionel Rogosin's film, Arab Israeli Dialogue. This will include all new footage that extends Rogosin's intentions and desires to keep the dialogue going as well as finishing Rogosin's unfinished work with the subject which was not completed before his death.

No amount donated will be considered too small.

I especially urge my fellow countrymen of Canada - specifically our currently beleagured documentary filmmakers to join the cause. Rogosin spent his whole life going through what you have gone through for your art. That said, your art was ALWAYS directly or indirectly influenced by Rogosin. If 100 Canadian documentary filmmakers contributed $10 each, it would represent about 25% of what's currently required.

I also urge every documentary filmmaker who had their film in this year's Hot Docs film festival in Toronto to contribute.

I urge every buyer, seller, producer and forum participant in Hot Docs 2013 to contribute.

In these dark days, filmmakers MUST join forces with other filmmakers to continue a world wide tradition of excellence.

To learn more about the efforts to restore and expand Arab Israeli Dialogue into A Modern Arab Israeli Dialogue and pledge a modest or huge amount of money, please visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881116046/a-modern-arab-israeli-dialogue . This is the official Kickstarter pledge site.

REMEMBER: You have until Thursday May 23, 1:34pm EDT, to contribute.

To learn more about Lionel Rogosin, feel free to read my review of On The Bowery HERE.

To learn more about the restoration, preservation and distribution of Rogosin's work and other groundbreaking works of cinematic art, visit the website of Milestone Films from the visionary Dennis Doros and Amy Heller HERE and for their efforts with respect to Rogosin's On The Bowery and Come Back Africa.

Milestone Rogosin Restoration joins Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best List of Blu-Ray/DVD Releases of 2012 - Today's Accolade is ON THE BOWERY, the American masterpiece of Cinéma Vérité documentary filmmaking.

The Best Blu-Ray and DVD Releases

of 2012 as decreed by Greg Klymkiw

This was a stellar year for Blu-Ray and DVD collectors that it's been difficult to whittle my personal favourites down to a mere 10 releases. So hang on to your hats as I'll be presenting a personal favourite release from 2012 EACH and EVERY single day that will comprise my Top 10. At the end of all the daily postings, I'll combine the whole kit and kaboodle into one mega-post with all titles listed ALPHABETICALLY. My criteria for inclusion is/was thus: 1. The movie (or movies). How much do I love it/them? 2. How much do I love owning this product? 3. How many times will I re-watch it? 4. Is the overall physical packaging to my liking? 5. Do I like the picture and sound? There was one more item I used to assess the material. For me it was the last and LEAST area of consideration - one that probably surprise most, but frankly, has seldom been something I care that much about. For me, unless supplements really knock me on my butt, their inclusion is not that big of a deal. That said, I always go though supplements with a fine tooth comb and beyond any personal pleasure they deliver (or lack thereof), I do consider the educational value of such supplements for those studying film and/or those who might benefit from them in some fashion (film students or not). So, without further ado, here goes.

GREG KLYMKIW'S 10 BEST BLU-RAY & DVD RELEASES OF 2012 (WHICH WILL BE COMPILED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER IN ONE FINAL MEGA-POST). TODAY'S TITLE (MORE TO FOLLOW ON SUBSEQUENT DAYS) IS NONE OTHER THAN:

If this list was not alphabetical, "On The Bowery: The Films of Lionel Rogosin", available on a sumptuous Blu-Ray or DVD package from <a href="http://www.milestonefilms.com/">Milestone Films</a> would probably be #1. Not only do you get the stunning restoration of the title film, but this stellar package includes Rogosin's powerful 1957 short "Out" which deals with the displaced person refugee camps in Europe and his exquisite experimental documentary "Good Times, Wonderful Times" which juxtaposes the pretensions on display during a bourgeois party with the most sickening footage from the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Add to this mix a collection of archival films and several eye-opening documentaries on Rogosin and the making of "On The Bowery" and you have a magnificent item to cherish, study and watch over and over again.

On The Bowery (1956) dir. Lionel Rogosin
Starring: Ray Salter, Gorman Hendricks

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

"Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." - John Cassavetes

"Postwar America experienced a dramatic economic expansion, sustained prosperity, and a huge population increase. By the 1950s, the United States ... manufactured half the world's goods, possessed over 40 percent of the world's income, and had by far the highest standard of living."- National Archives, USA

Postwar prosperity in America is a myth - bought and paid for at a very dear cost to a generation of forgotten men. This had far-reaching implications upon future generations and the nation as a whole. The ramifications of a somewhat spurious development of a middle class are felt today in ways the American people probably never imagined.

Not even in their wildest dreams would anyone have conjured the near-dystopian widening between rich and poor that's so prevalent in today's America. It's a history of building up a teat-suckling dependence upon greed and waste on the backs of those most vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation. During the early post-war era, this facade-of-plenty engendered escape in bottles of cheap booze and a class of working men who were sneered at - if and when they were noticed or remembered at all.

Cinema and indeed, mankind as a whole, owes a debt of gratitude to the late filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. Inspired by the Italian neorealist movement and in particular, the work of Vittorio (Bicycle Thieves) DeSica as well as the groundbreaking docudrama work of Robert (Nanook of the North) Flaherty and Lewis Milestone's evocative film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Rogosin created an important body of work. He gave voice to the disenfranchised in a style that built upon his chief influences and his own life experience experience whilst developing a unique style that was all his own.

Rogosin influenced such diverse talents as Cassavetes (Shadows), Scorsese (Who's That Knocking at My Door?) and the realist vérité of UK's "Angry Young Man" genre, including John Schlesinger (Terminus, Midnight Cowboy).

Rogosin earned a degree in Chemical Engineering at Yale and was poised to join his father's textile firm when World War II interrupted these career plans and he ended up serving in the Navy. His experiences during the war and especially after the war, when he travelled through the debris of a decimated Europe, affected him deeply. Returning to America, he did not stay with his father's firm long, deciding to pursue his interest in human rights, activism and cinema.

His ultimate goal was to create work that would benefit mankind.

On The Bowery was his first film - so extraordinary that it attracted the attention of the British film collective the Free Cinema - whose members included Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reizs and Tony Richardson. Along with Schlesinger, Rogosin was a chief influence upon the New Wave of British Cinema and they were the movers and shakers behind presenting his work to British audiences.

John Cassavetes declared: "Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." He tempers the justifiable hyperbole with the word "probably", but it's certainly no stretch to place Lionel Rogosin in the unequivocal pantheon of great documentarians of all time. Cassavetes's respect for Rogosin was merely the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, Rogosin's importance to cinema has seldom been paralleled. He pioneered the forward movement of cinéma vérité (using the camera to provoke reality by blending "fly-on-the-wall" direct cinema with stylized approaches and specific set-ups that utilize overt narrative technique), thus forging a path that opened up a whole world of great filmmaking. I'd argue strenuously that without Rogosin, things might well have been a lot different.

The art form, the genre of documentary itself might not have easily yielded the work subsequently provided by the likes of Sinofsky/Berlinger, Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield, Ulrich Seidl, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault, Allan King, Albert/David Maysles, Alan Zweig, Peter Lynch, Nik Sheehan, D.A. Pennebaker, Fredrik Gertten, Barbara Kopple and frankly, a list that could stretch on for a few more miles.

On The Bowery, his first film (and surely one of the great first films in the history of cinema), focuses the camera upon the lives of America's forgotten men who lived in the squalor of the Bowery in New York City. Once an upscale neighbourhood, the Bowery transformed - almost overnight - into a symbol of urban blight.

When the city built a series of overhead train tracks in the area, it created an endless cacophony and worse, it blocked the daylight - enshrouding the Bowery in darkness, shadow and shade.

Slats of hazy sun crept into the district like a ghostly filter. Occasional dollops of sunlight where no track existed played tricks on the eye and seemed even brighter, more hyper-intense than it normally would have been.

Seedy hotels, flophouses, pawn shops, soup kitchens and sleazy taverns became the lifeblood of the district. Attracting a generation-or-three of men who had suffered through war, these aimlessly shell-shocked victims of American prosperity and might, eked out a living as seasonal and migratory labourers - many of whom "rode the rails", risking the brutality of rail bulls, a criminal element and even incarceration.

They sought cheap rent and cheap booze to drown their pain and sorrow. Blowing their earnings on potent mescal and beer chasers, a lot of them couldn't even afford flea-bitten flophouses and lived on the street. The Bowery ran rampant with homelessness.

Essentially, Rogosin fashioned a "dramatic" construct to examine the lives of these men. He found two exceptional real-life personalities and followed the simple tale of Ray Salter and Gorman Hendricks whilst using montages of the Bowery and its residents as transitional bookends and punctuation marks. All the gnarled, grizzled and blotchy mugs Rogosin picked to populate the film are completely and without qualification photogenic in extremis.

Ray Salter, however, was a rugged, handsome and relatively young man who came to the Bowery with money in his pocket and a spring in his step. With his two-fisted good looks - a Joel McCrae-type with a Barrymore profile - Ray was so critically praised and profiled in magazines and newspapers that he eventually received numerous offers to act in Hollywood.

Sadly, this was not in the cards for poor Ray.

The tale told in On The Bowery is true. At a sleazy bar, Ray meets the friendly Bowery veteran Gorman. In short order, they become close friends. Of a sort. Ray is slyly coerced into buying so many rounds of drinks that he eventually pawns a good many of his possessions. There are, however, a few items dear to Ray and he won't part with them, but in one massive blind drunk, he passes out on the street and what little he has left is stolen and hocked.

While dependent upon alcohol, Ray still maintains hopes and dreams of kicking the demon fire-water and leave "The Life" of the Bowery behind. Ray was, no doubt an alcoholic to begin with, but over time, like all the rest, he's sucked into the patterns so deep-seeded in the place and time. His desire to dry-out is sadly not strong enough to withstand the physiological toll alcohol takes upon him. Even in this day and age, alcoholism is a horribly misunderstood disease that's compounded by societal prejudice - ascribing personal "weakness" to the affliction. While help exists now, it's still far from adequate. In Ray's day, help was virtually non-existent.

As for poor Ray, the Hollywood dream dried up when he hit the open road and was never seen nor heard from ever again. Given the cards dealt to America's forgotten men, this is not so much a mystery, but the reality of what happened to so much of humanity.

The squalor and poverty in On The Bowery is, at times, shocking - not, however, because we're agog at how things were. In a sense, this portrait of disenfranchisement, whilst very specific to the postwar era and a neighbourhood long-transformed and almost gentrified, the sad fact of the matter is that the lives of Ray, Gorman and all the others in this film continue all over the world and in North America specifically, these conditions are escalating to a frightening degree.

Rogosin's camera eye never flinches from the filth, pain and inhumanity perpetrated against these men of the Bowery.

There are women too - alcoholic old whores offering their bodies in the bars to anyone who will buy them drinks. In some cases, they're hoping their johns will have a place to sleep for the night or vice versa.

Most of the men who can afford it, though, will stay in flophouses - no women allowed - where they're shoved into open-ceilinged cubicles covered with wire cages.


The men are essentially incarcerated - perhaps not in literal jails or prisons, but by the indigent lifestyle they've been forced into. The scenes in the flophouses are so evocative, one can almost recoil from the stench of filth, sweat and disease.

The film is replete, however, with so many aspects of humanity. A lot of what's extraordinary in the picture are the unbelievably funny, poignant and even dangerous moments captured in the bars where we follow mildly "improvised" conversations between the men. Rogosin "sets-up" certain "scenarios", but what we see is ultimately the real thing. Ray and Gorman are a great team - not only cinematically, but within the reality that unfolds - one of father-son, veteran-naif and teacher-student.

What the film ultimately exposes are the forgotten men - all those who were (and still are) abandoned, by society, family (if any are even left) and (like so many war vets) their country.

Rogosin's almost benign provocation of these men exposes their very hearts and minds. This, if anything, is what makes this one of the most stunningly moving portraits of humanity ever committed to film. Rogosin gives them a voice and presence they deserve - or at the least, a celluloid epitaph instead of a potter's field.

They're humanized in ways only the camera can achieve. Rogosin's sensitive caring eye helps us get to know these sad, yet extraordinary "ordinary" men who gave up everything for their country.

Everything!

Holding on to what scraps of existence are left for them, numbing their deep pain with booze and finding a sense of family with each other, Lionel Rogosin - documentary filmmaker extraordinaire - gives them a voice and on film, a place in the world.

The men of the Bowery, lest we forget, are remembered forever.

Support This Site By Ordering Your Copy of ON THE BOWERY from Amazon at the links below

In USA and the rest of the WORLD - BUY On the Bowery - HERE!

In Canada - BUY On the Bowery HERE, eh!

In the UNITED KINGDOM - BUY On the Bowery - HERE!

ON THE BOWERY - "The Films of Lionel Rogosin Volume 1" - From the visionary Milestone Films - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Anyone who cares about cinema will add this important work to their collection. Rogosin gave a powerful voice to the disenfranchised, paved new roads for cinéma vérité and inspired subsequent generations of filmmakers.

On The Bowery (1956) die. Lionel Rogosin
Starring: Ray Salter, Gorman Hendricks

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

"Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." - John Cassavetes

"Postwar America experienced a dramatic economic expansion, sustained prosperity, and a huge population increase. By the 1950s, the United States ... manufactured half the world's goods, possessed over 40 percent of the world's income, and had by far the highest standard of living."- National Archives, USA

Postwar prosperity in America is a myth - bought and paid for at a very dear cost to a generation of forgotten men. This had far-reaching implications upon future generations and the nation as a whole. The ramifications of a somewhat spurious development of a middle class are felt today in ways the American people probably never imagined.

Not even in their wildest dreams would anyone have conjured the near-dystopian widening between rich and poor that's so prevalent in today's America. It's a history of building up a teat-suckling dependence upon greed and waste on the backs of those most vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation. During the early post-war era, this facade-of-plenty engendered escape in bottles of cheap booze and a class of working men who were sneered at - if and when they were noticed or remembered at all.

Cinema and indeed, mankind as a whole, owes a debt of gratitude to the late filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. Inspired by the Italian neorealist movement and in particular, the work of Vittorio (Bicycle Thieves) DeSica as well as the groundbreaking docudrama work of Robert (Nanook of the North) Flaherty and Lewis Milestone's evocative film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Rogosin created an important body of work. He gave voice to the disenfranchised in a style that built upon his chief influences and his own life experience experience whilst developing a unique style that was all his own.

Rogosin influenced such diverse talents as Cassavetes (Shadows), Scorsese (Who's That Knocking at My Door?) and the realist vérité of UK's "Angry Young Man" genre, including John Schlesinger (Terminus, Midnight Cowboy).

Rogosin earned a degree in Chemical Engineering at Yale and was poised to join his father's textile firm when World War II interrupted these career plans and he ended up serving in the Navy. His experiences during the war and especially after the war, when he travelled through the debris of a decimated Europe, affected him deeply. Returning to America, he did not stay with his father's firm long, deciding to pursue his interest in human rights, activism and cinema.

His ultimate goal was to create work that would benefit mankind.

On The Bowery was his first film - so extraordinary that it attracted the attention of the British film collective the Free Cinema - whose members included Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reizs and Tony Richardson. Along with Schlesinger, Rogosin was a chief influence upon the New Wave of British Cinema and they were the movers and shakers behind presenting his work to British audiences.

John Cassavetes declared: "Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." He tempers the justifiable hyperbole with the word "probably", but it's certainly no stretch to place Lionel Rogosin in the unequivocal pantheon of great documentarians of all time. Cassavetes's respect for Rogosin was merely the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, Rogosin's importance to cinema has seldom been paralleled. He pioneered the forward movement of cinéma vérité (using the camera to provoke reality by blending "fly-on-the-wall" direct cinema with stylized approaches and specific set-ups that utilize overt narrative technique), thus forging a path that opened up a whole world of great filmmaking. I'd argue strenuously that without Rogosin, things might well have been a lot different.

The art form, the genre of documentary itself might not have easily yielded the work subsequently provided by the likes of Sinofsky/Berlinger, Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield, Ulrich Seidl, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault, Allan King, Albert/David Maysles, Alan Zweig, Peter Lynch, Nik Sheehan, D.A. Pennebaker, Fredrik Gertten, Barbara Kopple and frankly, a list that could stretch on for a few more miles.

On The Bowery, his first film (and surely one of the great first films in the history of cinema), focuses the camera upon the lives of America's forgotten men who lived in the squalor of the Bowery in New York City. Once an upscale neighbourhood, the Bowery transformed - almost overnight - into a symbol of urban blight.

When the city built a series of overhead train tracks in the area, it created an endless cacophony and worse, it blocked the daylight - enshrouding the Bowery in darkness, shadow and shade.

Slats of hazy sun crept into the district like a ghostly filter. Occasional dollops of sunlight where no track existed played tricks on the eye and seemed even brighter, more hyper-intense than it normally would have been.

Seedy hotels, flophouses, pawn shops, soup kitchens and sleazy taverns became the lifeblood of the district. Attracting a generation-or-three of men who had suffered through war, these aimlessly shell-shocked victims of American prosperity and might, eked out a living as seasonal and migratory labourers - many of whom "rode the rails", risking the brutality of rail bulls, a criminal element and even incarceration.

They sought cheap rent and cheap booze to drown their pain and sorrow. Blowing their earnings on potent mescal and beer chasers, a lot of them couldn't even afford flea-bitten flophouses and lived on the street. The Bowery ran rampant with homelessness.

Essentially, Rogosin fashioned a "dramatic" construct to examine the lives of these men. He found two exceptional real-life personalities and followed the simple tale of Ray Salter and Gorman Hendricks whilst using montages of the Bowery and its residents as transitional bookends and punctuation marks. All the gnarled, grizzled and blotchy mugs Rogosin picked to populate the film are completely and without qualification photogenic in extremis.

Ray Salter, however, was a rugged, handsome and relatively young man who came to the Bowery with money in his pocket and a spring in his step. With his two-fisted good looks - a Joel McCrae-type with a Barrymore profile - Ray was so critically praised and profiled in magazines and newspapers that he eventually received numerous offers to act in Hollywood.

Sadly, this was not in the cards for poor Ray.

The tale told in On The Bowery is true. At a sleazy bar, Ray meets the friendly Bowery veteran Gorman. In short order, they become close friends. Of a sort.

Ray is slyly coerced into buying so many rounds of drinks that he eventually pawns a good many of his possessions. There are, however, a few items dear to Ray and he won't part with them, but in one massive blind drunk, he passes out on the street and what little he has left is stolen and hocked.

While dependent upon alcohol, Ray still maintains hopes and dreams of kicking the demon fire water and leave "The Life" of the Bowery behind.

Ray was, no doubt an alcoholic to begin with, but over time, like all the rest, he's sucked into the patterns so deep-seeded in the place and time. His desire to dry-out is sadly not strong enough to withstand the physiological toll alcohol takes upon him. Even in this day and age, alcoholism is a horribly misunderstood disease that's compounded by societal prejudice - ascribing personal "weakness" to the affliction. While help exists now, it's still far from adequate. In Ray's day, help was virtually non-existent.

As for poor Ray, the Hollywood dream dried up when he hit the open road and was never seen nor heard from ever again. Given the cards dealt to America's forgotten men, this is not so much a mystery, but the reality of what happened to so much of humanity.

The squalor and poverty in On The Bowery is, at times, shocking - not, however, because we're agog at how things were. In a sense, this portrait of disenfranchisement, whilst very specific to the postwar era and a neighbourhood long-transformed and almost gentrified, the sad fact of the matter is that the lives of Ray, Gorman and all the others in this film continue all over the world and in North America specifically, these conditions are escalating to a frightening degree.

Rogosin's camera eye never flinches from the filth, pain and inhumanity perpetrated against these men of the Bowery.

There are women too - alcoholic old whores offering their bodies in the bars to anyone who will buy them drinks. In some cases, they're hoping their johns will have a place to sleep for the night or vice versa.

Most of the men who can afford it, though, will stay in flophouses - no women allowed - where they're shoved into open-ceilinged cubicles covered with wire cages.

The men are essentially incarcerated - perhaps not in literal jails or prisons, but by the indigent lifestyle they've been forced into. The scenes in the flophouses are so evocative, one can almost recoil from the stench of filth, sweat and disease.

The film is replete, however, with so many aspects of humanity. A lot of what's extraordinary in the picture are the unbelievably funny, poignant and even dangerous moments captured in the bars where we follow mildly "improvised" conversations between the men. Rogosin "sets-up" certain "scenarios", but what we see is ultimately the real thing. Ray and Gorman are a great team - not only cinematically, but within the reality that unfolds - one of father-son, veteran-naif and teacher-student.

What the film ultimately exposes are the forgotten men - all those who were (and still are) abandoned, by society, family (if any are even left) and (like so many war vets) their country.

Rogosin's almost benign provocation of these men exposes their very hearts and minds. This, if anything, is what makes this one of the most stunningly moving portraits of humanity ever committed to film. Rogosin gives them a voice and presence they deserve - or at the least, a celluloid epitaph instead of a potter's field.

They're humanized in ways only the camera can achieve. Rogosin's sensitive caring eye helps us get to know these sad, yet extraordinary "ordinary" men who gave up everything for their country.

Everything!

Holding on to what scraps of existence are left for them, numbing their deep pain with booze and finding a sense of family with each other, Lionel Rogosin - documentary filmmaker extraordinaire - gives them a voice and on film, a place in the world.

The men of the Bowery, lest we forget, are remembered forever.

"On The Bowery: The Films of Lionel Rogosin" is available on a sumptuous Blu-Ray or DVD package from Milestone Films. Not only do you get the stunning restoration of the title film, but it includes Rogosin's powerful 1957 short "Out" which deals with the displaced person refugee camps in Europe and his exquisite experimental documentary "Good Times, Wonderful Times" which juxtaposes the pretensions on display during a bourgeois party with the most sickening footage from the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Add to this mix a collection of archival films and several eye-opening documentaries on Rogosin and the making of "On The Bowery" and you have a magnificent item to cherish, study and watch over and over again.

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