Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1956 • United States
Starring Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews
Lionel Rogosin’s landmark of American neorealism chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row, the Bowery. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded onto the screen, burning away years of Hollywood artifice, jump-starting America’s postwar independent-film scene, and earning an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. Developed in close collaboration with the men Rogosin met while spending months hanging out in neighborhood bars, ON THE BOWERY is both an indispensable document of a bygone Manhattan and a vivid and devastating portrait of addiction.
Up Next in Documentaries
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Uncovering THE NAKED CITY
Directed by Bruce Goldstein • 2020 • United States
In this original short documentary and personal essay, Bruce Goldstein, founder of Rialto Pictures and repertory director at New York’s FIlm Forum, tracks down many of the 100+ New York City locations—from the Bronx to the Lower East Side—used i...
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The Beaches of Agnès
Directed by Agnès Varda • 2008 • France
Starring Agnès Varda“If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. If we opened me up, we’d find beaches.” Originally intended to be Agnès Varda’s farewell to filmmaking, this enchanting auto-portrait, made in her eightieth year, is a freewheeling journey...
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Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer
Directed by Andrei A. Tarkovsky • 2019 • Italy, Russia
The life, art, and inner world of Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky is explored through the filmmaker’s own words and images in this appropriately hushed and reverent tribute to a cinematic titan. Lovingly made by the director’s son, ANDREI TA...
