So... before going into this, I knew this was a very rare screening of this - at the Film Forum NYC for "The City: Real and Imagined" series, no less - and, more curiously, the only leading role in a film for that figurehead of my teenage and 20s years on Inside the Actor's Studio: James Lipton. What I didn't realize until the opening talk with the writer of a book about Post-War films in New York city (subtitle with Kazan and Kubrick) is that this is one of the rarest screened films... like, *ever.*
The brief history of it is, Joseph Strick, later an adapter of Genet and James Joyce (Ulysses, The Balcony), made this as his first film at a time when, because of the end of the Consent Decree, the thought was "hey, why not make a film on our own, the theaters will take it!" But, of course, it had to be something people wanted, and at that time James Lipton was a stage actor with the Actor's Lab and this story, from an off off Broadway play about a guy who meets a girl and then the guy's bad breaks trying to get in somewhere in the world, wasn't a lot to write home about. It was finished but barely distributed, and Strick suppressed it and even destroyed the negative (!) In 67 - with only one 16mm print struck.
Luckily a collector had a print, the author of the NYC book saw it, and, with a little help from the Library of Congress (who had a copy), it led to the film we saw tonight in 16mm. I think if there's much to say it's being impressed it exists with as much polish and craft as it does. It doesn't look cheap, or sound as it was recorded live on set (something Kubrick didn't do until the Killing, who couldn't suppress Fear and Desire like Strick for too long, I digress), and it has a solid little story around an ambitious but not always very lucky man who wants to start a job renting dresses (or as an Importer/Exporter, long before Art Vandelay cornered that lucrative market).
How is Lipton as an actor? Well... not subtle! He came from the stage and it shows in positive and slightly cringy ways. His Marty, a "dreamer" and a hopeless gambler with one proverbial "good" break that ends as soon as it began, comes off like an "aw shucks" nice guy part of the time, and the other with this edge that should make him a criminal in a 1930s Warner gangster flick (or for that matter his energy when in close up reminded me of young Jack Napier in the 1989 Batman). He is convincing and does give a good performance overall, especially in the scenes where Marty grows desperate talking up and bargaining with a Hospital staff, but there are those moments when you scrunch your face seeing an actor taking his one take to air it to the cheap seats. In other words, he is in a B melodrama and gives a B performance. Hes... fine! And inconsistent in a compelling way!
I wish more people could see it, but at the same time I get its obscurity. I do hope if it ever somehow gets out to some company or other, you can all see especially the NYC street photography (maybe most of it shot in the Bronx which is kind of rare for that period), and the supporting performances around Lipton are believable ad well.
