Ray Salyer and Gorman Hendricks in On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin, 1956)
Cast: Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews, George L. Bolton. Screenplay: Richard Bagley, Lionel Rogosin, Mark Sufrin. Cinematography: Richard Bagley. Film editing: Carl Lerner. Music: Charles Mills.
Although it was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary, the fictionalized elements of On the Bowery are patent. Lionel Rogosin created this classic docufiction to provide an entry into the blighted lives of the street people of New York City. The men (and a few women) we see in the film are the ones who almost don't need film to be visible: They were on display for passersby every day. What they needed was understanding, and Rogosin's film at least provides a start to that by dramatizing several days in their lives -- the parts we don't see after we've left them on the street. The "actors" for the most part aren't acting: Rogosin met them on the street and crafted situations for them and let them improvise. The central figure is Ray Salyer, a man whose damaged handsomeness makes him stand out from the paunchy and grizzled men among whom he exists. Several of the other men we meet in the film would be dead in a few years, and after attempts to get his life together, Salyer would eventually die on the streets too. Bosley Crowther, the influential New York Times film critic, dismissively called On the Bowery "sordid." Fortunately, less complacent viewers have preserved it as an enduring look at a problem that refuses to go away.
