Jim Beckerman|NorthJersey.com
Movies began on the East Coast. Fort Lee, to be exact. Then, around 1910 — in the conventional telling —they moved to Hollywood, and never looked back.
But Teaneck film historian Richard Koszarski tellsa different tale.
Not only did the industrylook back, itcame back. In the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood rediscovered New York: the streets, the alleys, the girderbridges, the old piers. A cityfull of visual drama.
They discovered old studios in the Bronx and Brooklyn, abandoned since the early silent days. They discovered film labs and eagertechnicians ready to work. They discovered a reservoir of acting talent that looked and sounded nothing like the pretty people in Hollywood films.
The result was a fascinating spate of post-war moviesthat paved the way for the cinema — and the movie industry — of today.
"My argument is that you can't even think of the American cinema as just Hollywood," Koszarski said. "It is Hollywood. But there are people who wanted to work elsewhere."
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His book "Keep 'Em in the East," which came out last summer, is the inspiration for a film seriesat New York's premier revival house, Film Forum, through Feb. 10, and mostly consisting of pristine 35 mm prints. Koszarski, who is co-curating the festival withthe cinema's repertory director, Bruce Goldstein,will introduce several programs at the well-known venueon Houston Street.
"These films have fallen out of history, have been written out of history for a lot of reasons," Koszarski said. "It's missionary work for people like Bruce to show these films and provide the public with a context."
The real deal
"NYC's Movie Renaissance, 1945-1955" looks at a cycle of films that were made, just after the war, on real New Yorklocations, often using New York technicians and talent. These films had a realism that audiences, toughened by war and tired of Hollywood fakery, responded to. They changed the course of the movies.
"People who criticized Hollywood movies would say they had a sameness," Koszarski said. "They looked alike. They sounded alike."
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The films in this series like "On the Waterfront" (Feb. 8 and Feb. 10 at 12:30 p.m.), "Side Street" (Feb. 5at 6 p.m., Feb. 9 at 8:30 p.m.), "Little Fugitive" ( Feb. 6 at 11 p.m., Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m.), "The Naked City" (Feb. 5 at 7:50 p.m., Feb. 6 at 6:45 p.m., Feb. 7 at 8 p.m. and Feb. 10 at 9 p.m.), "Kiss of Death" (Feb. 8 at 8:30 p.m., Feb. 10 at 4:50 p.m.) and many others, seemed new and exciting at the time — and still do today.
They didn't look like ordinary Hollywood "product." And they didn't look like each other. What they had in common was an authenticity you can't get on a soundstage.
"A lot of these films were scrappy," said Koszarski, the author of "Fort Lee: The Film Town."
"They would appeal to audiences as having qualities that were unique. People would say, 'This reminds me of the films coming over from Europe.' "
That wasn't by accident.
The "neorealist" films like "Open City" (1945) coming out of Europe, and the war documentaries of the same period, accustomed audiences to a grittier, tougher, more believable view of life than Hollywood had been showing them. At the same time, a confluence of other events sent the movie industry scurrying back east.
Labor troubles in L.A. led the movie people back to New York, where unions were friendlier. The legal challenge to "block booking" — the practice that gavethe big studios a lock on theaters — meant that independentfilmmakers on the East Coast couldnow compete with the Hollywood big boys. They, too, couldget their workinto movie houses.
Meanwhile new directors, with new ideas, were balking at the restrictions of the Hollywood system — which for years had required that all films, whether set in New York, Peking or Dry Gulch, Arizona, be filmed in a studio backlot.
True to life
"'On the Waterfront' is a good example," Koszarski said.DirectorElia Kazanhad come from Broadway to work in Hollywood, but he rebelled against the cookie-cutter methods of thestudios. For his film about roughnecks on the New York waterfront (the film was actually shot in Hoboken) he insisted it be done on location. And with his own people, not Hollywood time-servers.
"Kazan was rejecting Hollywood," Koszarski said. "He had made some films there he wasn't happy with. And he was blaming the institutional structure. You walked into the studio, and it was the same cameraman and the same sound man who were making everybody else's films. If you had a new idea, it was very hard to bend them to your will."
For "On the Waterfront," Kazan wanted Boris Kaufman, a cinematographer mainly known for shooting documentaries. "He makes this film, and he wins the Academy Award for cinematography," Koszarski said. "And he wasn't even an member of the ASC [American Society of Cinematographers]."
The wharves, divesand tenement buildings of Kazan's waterfront could not have been faked by Hollywood. Nor could the performances.
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Marlon Brando, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steigerwere not the usualHollywood glamour types. Theywere New York theater people. They stammered, bellowed, slurred their lines.
A new style
To audiences used to MGM drawing-room enunciation, they were a whole new ballgame.The 1945-1955 New York "renaissance" introduced The Methodto the movies.In the following decades, it conquered Hollywood. James Dean, Paul Newman, Shelley Winters, Julie Harris, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Dustin Hoffmanwere among the actors whobrought the new techniqueto the screen.
And with the actors, a new crop of directors: Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Jules Dassinand many others brought a scrappyurban sensibility to movies, paving the way for the Martin Scorseses and Spike Lees that were to follow.
And ironically, even as the East Coasters defied the Hollywood establishment,the old system—with itsglamour and its contract players and backlot recreations of Fifth Avenue—was dying on the vine. It was the New York filmmakers, shooting on location, that paved the way for the future.
"A lot of movie histories talk about those great films like 'Midnight Cowboy,' 'The French Connection,' 'The Godfather,' " Koszarski said. "Those films didn't come out of nowhere. They came because these people had established a groundwork."
For more information: filmforum.org
Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access tohis insightfulreports about how you spend your leisure time,please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email:beckerman@northjersey.com
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