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NEW YORK IN THE FIFTIES Send This Review to a Friend
Betsy Blankenbaker's documentary based on Dan Wakefield's book needs a more accurate title, just as the book did. The scope is much narrower than the title would indicate. This is a portrait primarily of the cultural and intellectual set during that era, and as far as it goes, the film is an interesting recollection of various famous individuals who played a significant role at the time.
But save for a few references, those in the spotlight appear myopic with respect to what was raging around them in the decade. In the hysteria of McCarthyism, only dutifully alluded to, teachers were being fired, the political landscape in the city was changing, people were being tried for their political beliefs and there was plenty of activism despite the so-called Eisenhower doldrums. Nor is there any mention of the turbulent Rosenberg-Sobell case, the major controversial trial of the decade. Have they all forgotten the thousands upon thousands of protesting New Yorkers jamming Union Square and 17th Street and crying out in anguish on the 1953 night when the announcement came that the Rosenbergs had been executed?
The absence of such relevance is perhaps a comment on the self-absorbed concerns of the principals covered in the film. But that doesn't hamper the documentary for what it is. Quite properly it operates from author Wakefield's perspective as someone who escaped from Indianapolis to make it in New York. Among those covered by clips past and present are Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gay and Nan Talese, Robert Redford, Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne, Calvin Trillin, Ed Fancher, Nat Hentoff, William F. Buckley, Jr., Norman Podhoretz, Norman Mailer and Art D'Lugoff, to name just some of those recalled.
Betsy Blankenbaker's rich excursion into the past is fascinating on its own terms, and can serve as an education for those who weren't around at the time but want to learn more about influential individuals, their lives and contributions. For older viewers it can serve as a bit of nostalgia to measure against their own past, memories and concerns. Definitely worth a look. An Avatar Films release.
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