New York in the 50's

"New York in the 50's" is a sort of single-minded documentary of narrow appeal and opinion which boils down to a drone of yammering about the experiences of a few (mostly Dan Wakefield), their subjective perceptions and opinions, etc., does not paint much of a portrait of New York or the 50's or even New York in the 50's, and is sorely lacking in objectivity. In other respects the film is quite ordinary as well. Passable stuff which somehow got a three star rating by Tivo.

I only watched about 15 minutes of this movie it's all these people you've never heard of plus Joan Didion and one or two others of that ilk saying things like, "if you could make it there you could make it anywhere and that was a big appeal. you came to new york to get out from under of the bland conformity of the midwest and you could get rid of your background. there were always parties I remember parties. maybe that's cause I mostly came on the weekends. boy greenwich village there's nothing like THAT in Indiana!" with irritating constant jazz score and a montage that is just generic that fills in the spaces between snoozing heads and I have to add writers wore things to be interviewed in like collared shirt underneath a not exactly clashing sweatshirt but a not well added one to the shirt in question. it's like. oh brother. All the women say it was "glamorous". After 15 minutes I'm thinking to myself, "I'm going to watch this? not..."

There have been so many more detailed and depthed documentaries about aspects fleetingly touched on here, "NY in the 50s" is almost laughable in its thumbnail-dictionary-entry overview of the title subject. At first, it's mostly people talking about how "glamorous," "not like my hometown" and "where things were happening" the city was-just like they've been saying that about NYC for its entire history. It's also an irritant that while there's a lot of fun archival footage here, a fair amount of it is transparently from the early to mid-1960s. (Hairstyles and dance styles are an easy giveaway.) When we see Norman Mailer speaking, it's from a faceoff with Women's Liberationists in 1970! Needless to say, none of these clips are dated onscreen, so you feel like the filmmakers are trying to pull a fast one.

Eventually there's some attention paid to interesting things like to founding of the Village Voice, the glass ceiling for women in publishing, the faddish fascination with psychotherapy. But there's a real, dull obviousness to sections dwelling on very familiar subjects like the Beats, or the amount of social drinking back then. After a while, it's clear that the film largely focuses on writers (with barely a nod at other art forms, let alone non-artistic disciplines), but strangely, it won't admit that is its focus.

Nor will it admit that it's ultimately a glorified biographical documentary about writer Dan Wakefield (and in fact is based on his book), so finally we wonder why so much time is spent on this one moderately-interesting guy in a movie supposedly about the whole era. Even his story doesn't get enough detail to be compelling in itself. You wonder if the filmmakers had any general plan, or if they just edited together whatever footage they'd assembled, perhaps after curtailing production prematurely. Organizationally, this movie makes no sense-it has no thesis, and deals with different sub-themes in wildly unequal fashion to amateurish effect.

Anyway, this short feature would be good maybe to show to junior high or high school students to give them an introductory taste of a dynamic era. Or it might appeal to retired PBS viewers who once spent a couple exciting months in 50s NYC before scurrying back to those home towns. But for anyone who knows even a little about the time, place, and its importance as a breeding ground for artistic and cultural changes that would seem to suddenly "explode" in the 60s (but wouldn't have if their path hadn't been cut the prior decade), it's a ridiculously superficial overview. The interviewees used, though not particularly stellar (aside from the likes of Joan Didion and Robert Redford), would no doubt have plenty of interesting things to say-yet to a large degree all we get here are the blandest generalizations, as if viewers wouldn't be able to grasp anything more complicated.

"New York In the 50s" would also be useful to show in documentary filmmaking classes as a sort of "how-not-to," in that it refuses to commit to a coherent focus, so it ends up squandering both its big titular idea and the smaller ideas it introduces without exploring in any depth. Of course the archival materials and interview voices mean it's not completely without worth, but what a waste of good resources.

As one reviewer pointed out, this film is less a documentary about New York City and more a film about Greenwich Village and a small group of Bohemians. New Yorkers, in general, were NOT like the folks portrayed in the film. This isn't a major complaint--just a clarification.

If you watch this film, your reaction will probably have a lot to do with your values and beliefs. While so many folks looked back wistfully about the 50s in New York, to me I felt that most of the folks seemed like the most self-involved and smug individuals I have ever heard. Some, certainly not all, seemed to care mostly about feeling good through sex, smoking, psychoanalysis (which, in some ways is VERY egocentric) and drugs and you can easily see how the radical 60s truly had its roots in this New York movement. To me, these attitudes just seemed very sad and selfish.

In amazing contrast, the idealism, social consciousness and egalitarian aspects of this time I found admirable. Despite some of the incredibly "ME-oriented" people who talked in the film, a lot of good came from it as well. Its roots to the 60s civil rights movement were interesting and helped the viewer to see that racial equality didn't just "appear" in the 60s.

Overall, this is a mixed bag. The film is constructed well and has no narration--simply allowing those of the time to speak for themselves. This is the sign of an excellent and intelligent documentary. However, it's lack of balance and "wide-eyed" view of all the good of this time is disturbing--at least to this more conservative viewer. I wasn't enamored with many of these themes and felt there was a lot of negative though it all seemed to be portrayed too optimistically. To me, the good AND bad should have been explored--such as the early deaths due to substance abuse. Because of this, the film should play well to more liberal audiences and make "middle America", Muslims, and many others feel uncomfortable.

This documentary could just as easily have been called "Greenwich Village In the 50s" and lost nothing in the deal. It is a history of New York City from the vantage point of the disaffected. Those who moved to New York to get away from being the "Silent Generation" and to discover themselves artistically and culturally. Jazz music is here, writers and the founding of Village Voice newspaper is here, Kerouac, Ginsberg and the beats are here. Bob Dylan and the roots of 1960s folk in Washington Square is here. People who were there are interviewed and a lot of archival footage and music is interspersed to give a real sense of the time. With a documentary like this, lasting just about an hour and a half, there is the temptation to want more of whatever may have caught your eye while watching. The documentary does a great job in that it gives you enough to get you started on looking up these great authors and musicians on your own, it makes a point that the groundswell of the 50s in New York was books and words. To lead anywhere else but to these very writings would do an injustice.

Recommended if the whole Beat scene interests you. This would make a GREAT opening film to watch alongside another good docomentary called "Berkeley In The 60s" to see what happened when a lot of these people went west.