On the Bowery

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Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, this 1956 docu-fiction depicts a gritty New York City neighborhood populated by hard-luck, booze-soaked transients. Influenced by Robert Flaherty and Italian neo-realism, the film’s tapestry of weathered faces will forever etch themselves into your memory. Martin Scorsese called the film “a milestone in American cinema.” ON THE BOWERY, shot in stunning, stark black-and-white, remains a quintessential document of New York City’s seedy past.

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Release Date:	Mar 18, 1957
Running Time:	64 minutes
Country:	United States
Language:	English

synopsis

ON THE BOWERY chronicles three days on New York’s skid row, the Bowery. In the early part of the 19th century, it was an elegant place of large mansions and respectable theater. When the elevated trains came in, it covered the street in darkness and the Bowery soon became known as the place for low rents and cheap drinks.