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 Lionel Rogosin's Dangerous Docufictions
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Come Back, Africa
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria MakebaOne of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...
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Good Times, Wonderful Times
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1965 • United States
GOOD TIMES, WONDERFUL TIMES is director Lionel Rogosin’s urgent plea for humanity and his searing condemnation of war and fascism. For two years, Rogosin traveled to twelve countries to collect footage of war atrocities from their archives. To le...
