Customer Reviews

New York in the Fifties [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have enjoyed some of First Run Features' other documentaries and I am really interested in this particular time period and its effect on cultural history so I was really looking forward to this one. This film was dominated by a parade of actors, writers, poets, and film makers telling the exact same story with very little elaboration. The story is one we've heard so many times that for me, it has become a little tiresome. The story always goes that somebody felt stifled in middle America and had to come to New York in order to flourish in the practice of their particular art. This particular narrative is not exactly unique to the 50's and in my opinion, without a whole lot of context, is not a very interesting or convincing story. Logically, if one is a stage actor, for example, it will be easier to flourish in New York no matter the time period. On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of writers and poets who were able to both practice their art and succeed without having to move to New York and in my opinion a reasonable argument might be made that it can actually be more revolutionary to go against the grain rather than to move to New York where one can be sure to fit in with others of a like-mind. There is also a thread of narrative that suggests heterosexual New Yorkers of the fifties were either thinking about, pursuing, or having more sex than the rest of America. If so, again, it would take a lot of context to make such a narrative interesting. What I was really curious about were the references in the promotional materials to the Beat Generation, Jazz, performance, and art. We get very brief glimpses that are no more fleshed out than what you read in the promotional materials. This would have been extremely fertile ground, but this documentary does not delve into any of these subjects in any substantial way. Also, it must be mentioned that, in reality, Lenny Bruce was arrested in New York on obscenity charges as late as 1964 and New York police were still raiding gay bars as late as the Stonewall riot of 1969, so in some ways, New York was as backward as any other burgh in the U.S. This kind of balance would not fit neatly into this particular New York mythology. Prior to the invention of the pill in 1959, I doubt 50's era heterosexual New Yorkers were having more sex per capita, but if they were, one might expect to see some evidence like higher rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. It seems to me that rather than hammer one particular kind of story over and over, the film makers might have taken some of that time to explore what was happening in the world of art, jazz, the Beat Generation and performance in New York. In my opinion, it would have placed the other interviews in a context that would have made them more interesting and relevant.

A short but sweet piece that succeeds admirably in evoking a stimulating time and place. It's reassuring (though not that surprising) to hear Manhattan was as vibrant then as now, that the city opened its arms not only to immigrants but to left-leaning artists and writers who could never have thrived in conventional middle America. Highlights include a Jack Kerouac TV appearance, a brief James Baldwin interview, and current commentaries from Norman Mailer, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, Gay Talese, and Robert Redford. A must-see for Big Apple loyalists.

This film covers the time and place in a straight-ahead journalistic documentary style that, though slow paced at times, I thought appropriate to the material. New York in the '50's was no doubt an exciting, vigorous place to be, and some of the reasons for that are touched on well, if not always very deeply. Much of the story is Dan Wakefield's personal account. Wakefield, a journalist and writer who like so many others migrated to New York to start his professional career, has a great deal to tell from his recollections of the literary, journalistic, social, and -- somewhat less -- the artistic and musical revolutions taking place around him at the time. He's a good source of historic information. Having been the reporter of so much in his younger days, it's an act of gratitude on the part of the filmmaker to have invited him to be the source for today's reporting.

Additional detail is provided by interviews with writers such as Joan Didion, Calvin Trillin, Gay Talese, Nat Hentoff, composer David Amram, filmmaker Ted Steeg and others. Their stories add a great deal of interest and some depth. In general the combination of the relaxed conversational style of the film and the quick brush-strokes highlighting the many historic events, influences, personages, stories and places work well together if one is in the mood for that style of film. An unfortunate side to this however is that the excitement of the time and place -- the subject of the film -- can feel diluted by the nostalgic remembrances of its surviving participants. Still, it is surprising to be reminded of how powerfully the influences of that period's strong sense of human community, its racial awareness, the strangeness of gender segregation, and the reliance on booze and sex catalyzed the social changes about to take place over the next two decades.

The film is perhaps best approached as a personal memoir, and may be more enjoyed by aficionados of New York culture than those with only an idle curiosity. In balance though it offers an all-star lineup sharing a real wealth of first-person knowledge, and tackles a formidable subject with a warmth and generosity that one senses must have been as present and important in that period as its more sensational elements.

I have prattled on endlessly about the role of the beat writers and poets and their hangers-on, led by the trio of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, in leading the breakout from mainstream American society, literary society at least, in forming my own cultural tastes and that of many of my generation, the Generation of '68. That "beat" cultural movement, in my mind rightly or wrongly, is forever associated with New York City, and particularly Greenwich Village. And that is where the question of taste comes in for, except for short periods, the beat movement was as much a part of the San Francisco scene of the 1950s as New York. Moreover, there is another group of writers, as portrayed in this interesting, short film documentary that can claim, and do claim, for themselves the role of avant guarde anti-establishment New York writers. The names James Baldwin, Dan Wakefield, Norman Mailer, come quickly to mind, as do the "Village Voice" and the social democratic journal "Dissent".

I have detailed elsewhere my own feeling of suffocation with the cultural morass of the 1950's, although I was too young to articulate that angst even in a James Dean-like "Rebel Without A Cause" way. That period was exemplified by the stolidity of the Eisenhower administration. Nevertheless other little clots of people, who had come of age in the 1940s and who were molded by the Great Depression of the 1930s and the sacrifices of World War II, were interested in breaking out of the cultural straight jacket but also interested in making a name for themselves in the serious literary world. Those who succeeded are the writers who for the most part make up this film, led by those named authors above. I might add as this is a somewhat older film that since its production a number of those writers, and they were mainly writers here, the poets tended to go with the beats, have passed on, including recently, J.D Salinger, who I was surprised to note influenced and was a model for many of those who spoke in the film.

I mentioned the "Village Voice" and "Dissent" above, and it was those small relatively small publications that sustained these writers who came from all over America, even from the wilds of Indiana (Wakefield), to make their mark in the American cultural capital. Their reasons were as varied as any other group but to parody an answer that bank robber, Willie Sutton, gave when asked why he did robberies- that's where the publishing houses are (or were). Surprisingly many of these writers, unlike the beats, went to work writing copy, or what not, in the medium somewhere in order to make the connections. So that is one thing that separates this group from the beats.

More than one writer interviewed here did, like Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne did, make there mark in New York and then moved on. For, as all seemingly agreed, the cultural oasis of New York of the 1950's had a defining moment, later other cultural movements, movements that I am more familiar with, and not necessarily driven by writers took center stage. Still this film, and the archival footage that made up most of the backdrop, did its job in evoking a certain `feel' for the period. Moreover, some of the negative issues involved with a movement based in the "corrupt" city in the 1950s like the excessive alcohol consumption and partying that formed part of the writerly ethos, the definite second- class citizenship of women, and the burn-out rate, are addressed here. All in all this is a good presentation centered on the writers themselves. Still, I always think of that famous photograph of a smoking Jack Kerouac, a dream-like Allen Ginsberg and a blasé-posing William Burroughs when I think of New York. The "beat" habit is hard to break.

Note: Much of this film is driven by the anecdotes and storytelling of author Dan Wakefield, who is the central speaker here, and who helps to fill in the "back office" details of this period. I never would have known about his connection to Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker movement that formed the backdrop for one of his early book without his mentioning it and a host of other little arcane facts like that. Good job.