James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of an artist as a young man’ may be difficult to calibrate in the unconscious of movie director Sidney Lumet but being things are all relative his East New York origins struck a chord.
“Verdict” “Dog day afternoon” “Ten angry men” “Network” shedding light on issues tormenting the Willy Lomans of those whoring reality whirtls....to be and become someone
whom our mothers yearned for the moment her umbilical chord was spliced from the womb..
II
The Lee J Cobbs, Paul Newmans Henry Fondas Peterr Finchs captured their rroles...losing
themselves to find themselves-
But it was Al Pacino that may have been Mister Lumet’s finest, casting. a bank robber having an alter ego, their lamented get away seemed to these eyes, a shattered day dream that even Gloria Swanson “I’m ready for my close up, Mister DeMille” an anachronism,...a fantasy imbedded in
her mirror’s vanity...a transition to her inner needs playing out..
That mirror obliterated her fear of failing. Losing her mojo....those longings to not only command respect..an authoring figure or not...the love that was unrequited. The search for her
“Championship season”
III
Growing up in East New York...the push carts peddlers the” candy stores” the immigrant scramble for security and escape.....
”Just got off the boat”, Emma Lazarus poetry at the Statute of Liberty was the ominous energy “Give me your bread....”and its Ellis Island “arc de trumphe”
The migration to Brooklyn’s East New York.
The Hebrew Educational Society’s. melting pot.. Pitkin Sutter Saratoga Avenues.. buying and selling. “I can get it for you wholesale, sweetheart..bargaining on a pair of knickers... two for half the price...com’on bubbe... a bargain is a bargain ..not a metaphor Who are you? A slumming intellectual from uptown?
In that reality scene...fire escaped tenements. clothes lines..larceny in their nickel and dime bandit souls.
In that envirion the Loew’s Pitkin “escape” evolved.
IV
Going back to that big screen moment when Al Pacino cradled his alter ego’s head after their getaway went awry..
“Why why ”he asked, the cameras twirling, mister Lumet searching for the interior quarrelt, his bifocals piercing the laser like lenses
The accomplice aiding and abetting “You wouldn’t understand. Trapped in a man’s body...
with a woman’s soul. Where can I go? What country will take me?
Sonny answering his own rhetorical?.....Wyoming Wyoming. You love horses.The great outdoors.”
V
The organist pedaled the George Gershwin tin pan alley “I got rhythm”to that street smart
audience during the Saturday matinee. The lights turned on.... the screen cast aside behind the curtains. Seeing your friends and enemies. ..
The stage filled with management appointed East New York kids& pros: their whnirling spinning Duncan yo yos, the Pitkin awarding sweaters to the champs who could make their youo spin “around the world” “Rock the baby” “Sleep the lullaby,” twirling its own day
dream. :
Meanwhile..Arthur Miller’s “Death of a salesman” was playing out uptown...
“Attention must be paid..All Willy ever wanted was to pay off the mortgage.” his widow sobbed .at the funeral.
The Loews Pitkin..its ornamental glitzy interior&marquee... off to the
second balcony, the stage and screen welcoming the escape ala a Lasurel&Hardy madcap.
We forgot the images and melodies sounding like a Shangrila from some other planet....a comic book fantasy like Clark Kent’s “Superman” incognito or Boris Karloff ‘s “Frankenstein”
VI
Here Mister Lumet like another child of immigrant parents Arthur Miller, inherited his pursuit. The struggle to find oneself in that cosmos of subways street cars candy sores scapes
hydrants turned on ...Joel McCrea Sylvia Sidney’s Goldwyn’s Dead end”
Other flicks like Paul Muni’s “Scarface” or Warner Baxter’s ”Prisoner of Shark Island” “Sainey Potier Tny Curtis’s “Defiant ones” depicting skin pigment strangling sadism..
Suffocating in strangling small minded games that people play”.
Sidney Potioer and Ron Steiger “Heat of the night”.
VII
Mister Lumet’s dialogue ..... ‘on air conspiratorial role...Peter Finch’s
“I’m mad as Hell. I can’t take this anymore. I can’t.......” .his voice crashing thru
East New York’s Pitkin Avenue reality scene, April 13 ,2011
