Lenny Bruce Without Tears (1972)

          On some level, it’s probably fitting that the first documentary about groundbreaking hipster comedian Lenny Bruce, released less than 10 years after his death, is a low-budget enterprise shot on grungy black-and-white film. After all, Bruce spent much of his career playing smoky jazz clubs, even though he briefly enjoyed success on national television. In other words, if Lenny Bruce Without Tears were a stronger film, it might feel like just the right lo-fi tribute to a controversial funnyman who brought uncomfortable truths into his routines. Unfortunately, the fact that writer/producer/director Fred Baker largely constructs the film from second-hand footage makes Lenny Bruce Without Tears little more than a fawning clip show. Further, Baker’s only original interviews are with tangential figures who rehash familiar lore about Bruce as a tragic trailblazer. Plus, on some level, the movie feels somewhat exploitive and opportunistic—Baker’s real-life friendship with Bruce was used as a marketing angle, and Baker’s inconsequential narration repeatedly states that the filmmaker and his late subject were pals. If this half-assed doc is the best thing Baker could put together, one gets the impression that Baker and Bruce were more like passing acquaintances than true comrades.

          Yet the documentary’s lack of substance isn’t its biggest flaw. Instead, what makes Lenny Bruce Without Tears genuinely awkward is Baker’s incomprehensible aesthetic choice to employ experimental-cinema montages beneath audio of Bruce’s recorded routines. For instance, one such montage collides such disassociated imagery as Boris Karloff mugging in an old horror movie, Lyndon Johnson giving a speech, a marching band in action, and a monkey typing (!), none of which has anything to do with what Bruce is saying on the soundtrack. Extended video clips of Bruce doing stand-up on The Steve Allen Show aren’t much more interesting; while the comedy bits themselves are worthwhile as entertainment and as history, Baker simply runs the clips start to finish, evincing a major absence of curatorial discretion. And in his most nonsensical flourish, Baker upends the whole hero-worship vibe of the doc by including shock-value footage and stills of Bruce’s naked corpse, captured shortly after the comedian died of a drug overdose. Not exactly the most respectful treatment of a “friend.”

Lenny Bruce Without Tears: FUNKY

The Foreigner (1978)

I freely admit that the appeal of Greenwich Village’s grungy underground scene has always escaped me, even when I was peripherally acquainted with the scene during my NYU film-school days. Therefore, it’s no surprise that quasi-iconic punk-rock filmmaker Amos Poe’s black-and-white thriller The Foreigner left me cold. Featuring a plot that’s either nonsensical or trite, depending on how literally one interprets the onscreen images, the picture is marked by abysmal sound recording (many lines were dubbed, terribly, during postproduction), crappy cinematography (think garish lighting and spastic handheld camerawork), and ridiculously lifeless acting. If you can imagine a 77-minute student film shot on amateur stock and padded with drably filmed sequences of punk bands playing in dingy clubs, you’ve got an idea of why The Foreigner represents an endurance test for anyone but devoted fans of downtown hipsterism. The plot has something to do with European spy Max Menace (Eric Mitchell) spending time in New York while awaiting a rendezvous with the mysterious individual who will give him the details for his next job. Max wanders the streets, visits with strangers, endures a weird one-night stand with a chick who ties him up, and gets beaten and chased by enigmatic assailants. There’s also a random bit involving an Asian woman in a skin-tight catsuit being hired to spy on Max for reasons that are never clear (or interesting). What’s most peculliar about The Foreigner is the film’s paradoxical nature—it’s a “No Wave” exercise designed to flout the mainstream, and yet the overarching storyline is as conventional as that of a James Bond movie. Was the film meant to deconstruct popcorn cinema through unskilled emulation? Whatever, man. Perhaps the only reason The Foreigner still enjoys minor notoriety is that Blondie singer Deborah Harry—one of the most famous participants in the Greenwich Village scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s—pops up for one very brief scene. Alas, her appearance, like everything else about The Foreigner, is forgettable and pointless.

The Foreigner: SQUARE

Hester Street (1975)

          Although Hollywood films including The Fixer (1968) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971) explored the experience of European Jews, Joan Micklin Silver’s debut feature, the independently made Hester Street, was among the first mainstream pictures to explore the experience of Jewish immigrants in America. For that reason alone, the movie is noteworthy, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 2011. Yet instead of being the stuffy museum piece one might expect, Hester Street is a tonally varied movie featuring comedy, drama, romance, and sociopolitical commentary. It’s not the smoothest film, since Silver was still finding her way as a storyteller and since she was hemmed in by a tight budget, but it’s quite rewarding.

          Based on a novel from 1896 and set in that year, the movie re-creates the economically challenged milieu of European Jews who relocated to lower Manhattan and formed a tight community in and around Hester Street (which is now part of Chinatown). The film’s lead character is Yankel Bogovnik (Steven Keats), a Russian immigrant so thoroughly Americanized he calls himself Jake and conducts many of his conversations in English. Jake is a smooth-talking striver, even though he’s got a nowhere job in a sweatshop, and he has romantic designs on the beautiful and comparatively well-off Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh). The other figure in Jake’s world at the beginning of the story is Mr. Bernstein (Mel Howard), a kind-hearted boarder in Jake’s apartment who spends his time consumed in Talmudic study. Although Jake has accepted a significant sum of money from Mamie as a premarital dowry, he failed to tell her that he’s already got a wife and child back in the old country. So, when Jake’s wife Gitl (Carol Kane) and their son arrive on Ellis Island, Jake’s got some explaining to do.

          Once this fraught situation is established, Silver explores the complicated ways that Jake and the people in his life try to balance their obligations to traditional Jewish orthodoxy with their aspirations to U.S. modernism. Some of the best scenes feature Gitl emerging from her shell, because when she arrives in America, she’s a mousy foreigner afraid to speak her mind; later, after exposure to progressive ideas, she endeavors to escape a bad situation.

          The look of the movie is appropriate and interesting, since Silver shot the picture in hazy black-and-white images that recall turn-of-the-century photographs, and Silver’s tonal missteps are relatively minor. (The montage sequences that evoke silent-cinema comedy, for instance, are an acquired taste.) Keats is hard to take, committing to his character so wholeheartedly that he becomes repulsive, and it takes a bit too long for Kane’s character to find her strength. Still,  the last 40 minutes or so of the picture are delicately orchestrated, and Kane’s characterization gains subtle power. No surprise, then, that Kane received an Oscar nomination.

Hester Street: GROOVY

Manhattan (1979)

          Woody Allen’s most impassioned movie—if one accepts the popular notion that the great love of the comedian’s life is New York City, not any of his children or romantic companions—Manhattan is intoxicating from an aesthetic perspective. Allen’s genius notion of pairing George Gershwin’s resplendent music with artful black-and-white images of New York City turns every exterior shot into a cinematic postcard, and the way Allen stages an elaborate dance of interconnected romantic relationships against this magical backdrop accentuates the appealing idea that Manhattan is made for lovers. Yet the film is also challenging and complex, a hyper-literate saga starring Allen as a character for whom it’s difficult to sympathize.

          By the filmmaker’s own admission, Manhattan synthesizes elements from his two immediately preceding pictures, the bittersweet romance Annie Hall (1977) and the bleak family story Interiors (1978). Thus, Manhattan’s blend of farce and pathos arguably represents Allen’s first truly mature work, a human story that neither hides behind crowd-pleasing jokes nor indulges in pretentious psychodrama. Manhattan is not for every taste, to be sure, but it’s a fascinating film made with exceptional intelligence and skill. Plus, even if the characters are painfully neurotic and self-serving, that’s at least partially the point—building on the sharply observed character work in Annie Hall, Allen used Manhattan to further hone his skills for cultural observation and social satire, and none of the film’s characters (including the Allen-esque scribe whom the director portrays) escapes devastating scrutiny.

          The main plot concerns the romantic travails of Isaac Davis (Allen), a comedy writer who is sleeping with a 17-year-old student (Mariel Hemingway). Despite this entanglement, Isaac is also drawn to a woman his own age (Diane Keaton), who is having an adulterous fling with Issac’s (married) best friend (Michael Murphy). Meanwhile, Isaac’s ex-wife (Meryl Streep), who came out as a lesbian after her marriage to Isaac ended, is writing a tell-all book about their relationship. Working once more with Annie Hall cowriter Marshall Brickman, Allen constantly jogs back and forth between comedy and drama, often in the same scene, and the film’s acidic dialogue explores the many ways people impede their own happiness.

          The central love story isn’t as compelling as that in Annie Hall—it’s hard to root for a grown man who’s schtupping a schoolgirl—and the movie sometimes skews a little too downbeat. However, the blazingly intelligent writing, the uniformly wonderful performances, and Gordon Willis’ spectacular cinematography make the film thoroughly rewarding. (Of special note among the actors is Hemingway, who gives the best performance of her career at a very young age; the curiosity, emotion, and naïveté she brings to her character almost makes Isaac’s inappropriate involvement understandable.) Most of all, it’s compelling to watch Allen’s artistry reach an early peak, and to realize that over the course of the ’70s, he rapidly evolved from a lightweight jokester to one of the world’s most important cinematic storytellers. 

Manhattan: RIGHT ON