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jcr johnny came with us reduce everything caribbean sierra well review
on the ballot today
as usual watched john's review of a comeback needed some interesting
facts from that era
so let's watch
aa
gandhi
all of that
bolo landline
garlic and and and and and we
concluded that she had go and she says that question
well there
anyway in india in many ways
activity weather
primarily an artist and how much you know when i got a lot of that you can
think of
well and i a now said i don't know about the bell had been employed by leoni
again why the that these women
a few weeks ago i was invited to a screening of a restored print of a movie
from nineteen fifty six i've never heard
the film was on the ballary program britain kind of cedar documentary film
on location in new york skid row
the director flannel robison spent months on the barry without his camera
too soon to know the homeless tromping for gunmen who made the sidewalks alleys
and or ways of the barry their home many of whom or were to veterans even see
began shooting with a small crew and the result was as groundbreaking honest and
painful as it was revel tory unflinching lee grady documentary footage of
america's lost men wrapped around a scripted story featuring to real life
bowery residents won his new place an old timer who knows all too well
the men are race all year and gorman hendrix who says the plane versions of
themselves
ray both a man and character is might enter in railroad worker
younger healthier and more handsome than the other whiners but with the tragic
drinking problem
gorman an older man an alcoholic who was once a doctor and a journalist takes ray
under his wing to introduce into the neighborhood just as gorman had done
with robison during his initial research for the fell the movie follows the men
over three days as rate comes to clean himself up and find work only to be
thwarted by his drinking gorman contradictory mix of gentleness and
manipulation spends most of the days visiting with other whiners and
seemingly pondering wears like his head joining ray at night to keep him off the
wagon and help drink up his mind it's a pretty bare story in the dialogue
between rain gorman is often stilted but the power of on the barry largely
springs from its stunning documentary imagery andy frame of the cracked
scarred days to thirty faces of the barry meant to be hanging in a museum
men bars shot and fight as they downed their drinks until they pass out on
sidewalks in doorways or a flop house our mission if they're lucky
men's brains are so critical that their reduced to raggedy babies unable to
stand up and unaware of what's happening around
inouye these images may be think of dorothea lange psychotic depression era
photos come to life or if the grapes of wrath have been made using actual
documentary footage in real dust bowl refugees
the images in on the barrier ones america had never seen and many would
preferred remained hidden despite an oscar nomination and being the first
american film to win the best documentary award at the venice film
festival
on the barry struggled to find distribution and was attacked by several
critics
our victory in world war two was supposed to demonstrate the superiority
of american values but on the barry challenged that by showing that the
greatest city in the greatest country in the world was still allowing its
citizens to die slowly on the streets in abject poverty charges still rings true
today especially during our great recession
on the barry also developed as the idea that world war two was the quote good
war were soldiers returned home to a grateful nation that shower them with
education and jobs when the reality is that war had shattered the lives of many
of these better
it's who are suffering from post-traumatic stress that would be
diagnosed for decades so they turn to self medicating with alcohol
it's hard to imagine what it was like to see on the barry when i was released
over fifty years ago but the film is now doing recognized as a cinematic
milestone
one of the grease independent films of all time
in a film worthy of preserving forever in the library of congress is national
phone registry
but more than that seeing on the barry remind me of what i love about movies
and why do these reviews because a great film has the potential to change the way
we look at our world our country artistry and ourselves
and once that's happened once we see things in a more truthful light we have
the power to recognize them for what they are in change them for the better
on the barry isn't unearthed treasure of living in new york and american history
in a film not to be missed
i'm jonathan kim and this is a rethink review
all right john interesting is always first
listeners home a little clear it is a documentary
almost everybody in the movie is actually from the ballary anisha
shooting it
that play kids live date
dispute anybody's is speed
and are the actors from the barrier there not from the back the so the two
main actors are race all year and gorman hendrix babel
everyone in the movies is from the bowery but
they kind of pick them to be the main characters of this they weren't really
actors
and so the scripted some of their dialogue or kind of let them kind of
improvise it because they're trained actors
but a lot of the shots like in the beginning you see
in the bar that was actually i think they were just shooting in the bar
in any kind of used one corner of it to do their little scenes and to have a
mike and things like that right and what happened actors after the move
well uh... gorman hendrix who was on have been a life of a late if your life
on alcohol he had services of the liver
and at one point when before shooting started uh... the director took him to a
doctor
because he would looked unhealthy in his stomach was descended he said like the
doctor said basically if if you drink again if you are another bender you will
die
plants over and then so
hendrix committed to not drinking during the shooting but basically after the
shooting was over he went on a bender and died
dot while headed in the race all year who i mean you eat unfortunate into that
one and my review but
so really good looking guy he got compare lucky gary cooper and
but he was a really serious alcoholic
and you know after the movie came out keep doll this kind of attention started
swirling around him and i women were kinda going crazy ap over him
and uh... a hollywood studio actually offered him forty thousand afford up and
our contract to come to hollywood and be an actor
and he turned it down
real tds and he said
quote are just what the barry and to be left alone
because he was just that the such a heavy drinker and and apparently u
one day you wake you just said
i have to get outta here and he got on a freight train and no one ever psalm
again
but you know if you ellyn
and it's very serious but if you take a forty thousand you could buy more beer
if it's not going through you know what i'm saying that at a rate of it
now look of course as you said this is because a lot of these guys were on the
war right and and back and they didn't call post-traumatic stress disorder what
it what are they call it in what they think of it
right i mean there is the idea of of shell shock
which
that there's kind of different deafness to this combat
combat stress reaction which is considered more come on the battlefield
but that can lead to p t s t afterwards
but there was so shocking that or someone else to me
these is caught mirror gpus or or there's also combat fatigue
and stand by for a look at one time this is basically undiagnosed
and at one point uh... there is decreasing called the pie principles
which word nected to deal with what was called
then why d_n_ which was it not yet diagnosed nervous
which is very basically people who you know who's
brains words broken
and i'd be pretty nervous to fewer bombs dropping all around
right in that direction nazis shooting at me and possibly capturing me that
would give me the nerves yes they would
yet so bring at first they have been they starting to learn some lessons in
world war one and then comfort dot the more world war two and then start to
bring in psychiatrists but
there's also the again this is this a our view has to happen in all wars and
during the civil war there is something called
soldiers heart and nostalgia
which were cancer which were considered just like the
like it's like being sad yelling behaving sat on the battlefield where is
actually your traumatized and when you think about like the number of
casualties that happen in world war two living nightmare worst word saying that
like
the persons as a p_t_ sdn any conflict no matter what is something like
over fifty percent
but you know in your own war were to work tens of thousands were
people were dying in single battles
it must have just been off the charts and so these guys who came back
the will just didn't make sense anymore and all the things that we know about
pete e_s_t_ now where it's you have trouble staying in your family high
divorce rates can hold jobs
you know you're paranoid you're you know your twitching everything he can't sleep
and also you know it figuring that in if this is an the mid-nineteen fifties
that this time when there wasn't really therapy or psychiatrist and if you did
everyone look down on that
right well that's what i want to go to next by the way of my favorite of
euphemisms who's a starter
yeah massively scarred from war
i got a little case in a stall together watching their friends get ripped apart
by just don't stop there could be a yet
with so what happened when they came back and he knew how is out of you know
this but i was the veterans administration
you know i i i a you know
did he get treatment did not get treatment or they're like welcome about
injury yourself that's it think that there there were probly veterans halls
but i mean it's kind of like a we have now is people who fought out of the
system
you know and and also i think there is argue that
well you just you know you come back from war you know these get your job and
you'll go on with your life a good job
about realizing that this is like a duck different type of job but
i didn't actually do it that much that much information on that but at this
point that the u_s_ czar the u_s_ has a system that is called
biceps
which deals with its research for brevity immediacy centrality your
contact expectancy proximity in simplicity
and these are wasted trying to deal with this the battlefield
battlefield problem so
ours were getting better and better at this but the problem is is people who
who are going in for your help they're they're falling out of the system or
just the idea that
soldiers are supposed to adapt this was adopted whatever's wrong with them in
trying to fight through it but now luckly it seems that that ideas changing
but i mean a big thing is
was just not get in wars are not going to come out at night
your some things in your broken you physically or mentally rang a boat today
m
of the concerns in the house uh... among homestead
released
what they would cut
and i didn't credit for actually releasing the lips right over here right
one of his a kind of course is veterans affairs
okay it's come on you're ready for the war we don't need you anymore
that's one of the issues but now look the other part that i was fascinated by
its
the context of the nineteen fifties it raises vision of like he'd be idea lake
in america in you know ed harriet in whoever and cleaver and be a bird all
those folks
and you've and of course
also had this
as well and so how prevalent was this and how much were people base that we
were showing to the rest of the world
that will of the universe of the movie was having a hard time getting
distribution
and
because it just show this america that no one really want to talk about and
famously so that the movie won this award at the venice film festival and
claire luce booth who was the
ambassador until the u_s_ ambassador to the week
refused to see the movie
to said no this does not represent america or american values he's just
want to pretend that it didn't exist
and i think when they tried to to fight to respond the movie and restore it they
had to be they had to go to other countries to fight to find good quality
prints of it because they were so few of them in america so wasn't being shown
that many places of this concert of this is depressing or our dates focusing on
the bad things about america
but but in other parts of the world they were kinda fascinated by it and i mean
when when you look at the it
you can make a movie like this now in it would be revolutionary i think if you
actually just stayed with homeless people in homeless camps
casting and in in the movie to play characters that were basically
themselves
would still be amazing and one thing like when i watch this
there might be a lot of the the mid nineties movie kids
that was like such a became compensation and sort of a scandal but i think what
was amazing about that for people was that
it looked and felt very much like a documentary
and it was these kids in new york who've they weren't like abuse occurring from
broken families or anything like that
but we're doing lots of drugs having unsafe sex and things like that
it really kind of blue people's mind i think that this movie was like that but
much much less you know it in this day major i don't think that it would work
out for with homeless who looks at me people already know that there's
homeless people
and that at this point we kind of become immune to it like at their skid row now
that's that is what it is
and he will have ehlers i think the equivalent
would be doing a movie on detroit
where it's supposed to be a city right or campaign and you think no it's fine
despite its detroit right
and you go through the city realize all it's devastation
but there are any job slapped and then what's left is when you remove
all of the governor's services this happens
in camden what you get lettuce crop
that's that's so what we don't want to see today in independent contemporary
america
we don't want to see these cities that are crumbling
we don't want to knowledge it so i think that would be in step but i think also
to look at like the tent cities of the newly homeless
to see what that looks like because i mean i think there's ah... there's so
much the stadium is pretty much republicans
that unemployed people it's basically their own fault in the waiting make them
get jobs is the tough love of cutting off unemployment
right uh... you know let me just one last thing on that
this is how an alabama they keep talking about where they yet
ran out of money and they can't pay attention anymore
so not people literally as out of a new york times or freezing to death
because they don't have anything they don't have anything their in their homes
they campaign they keep building freaks right
to do it i can address tell mike that in the heart of alabama and what happens
when base a sad day for you which is not
we had a contract you work your whole life you got this pension well we're
violent by late in the contract now if you violate contracts with a big banks
all carlo
hello you do it for damaged an alabama
and he's screwed
and no one gives a day
i think that the equivalent
or the lassie on this will be allowed to
fake tells a little bit of history the bank is a mix in that right so that i
mean the bowery it's one of the oldest streets in i'm going to order street in
manhattan
continues to be survivors why we fear district and
bars and things like that and was also if you saw the gangs of new york the
barry was kind at the end of the five point slum in the barry boyes were very
famous gang and a lot of sort of underworld stuff kind of
kind of came out of the barry and then it starts slide in then basically i
think the late eighteen hundred's through the nineteen fifties they built
until the elevated sub subway over the over the bowery
and it made the street dark
and slow like a lot of the nicer businesses left
it just be emilie became a darker place where were kind of darker aspects of the
society kind of gathered
the bars as we can rent more rundown they became with a college in mills
and then the hotel's turned into plop houses which you see in the movie or is
this is like
beds separated by plywood on the side with like chicken wire across the top it
for you know just a few sense you know you to please have a bit to stand out
and up sleeping on the streets but
the realization that
it shows that city planning that the heaviest if you you you you shroud you
know a street in darkness and a soccer dr but now
nothing much more gentle fight in the opposite of expressed
rat
now probably wall street gasser movie get and those are actually
the darkest characters in america yes the predicate
so spoke base
all right jolly jim we figure views
dotnet uncovering them post on youtube et cetera something so much for coming
in as always