was life in brooklyn really that sleazy?
it just seems too messed up. Reminds me of saturday night fever.
shareWell being from Brooklyn, that is the main reason I had any interest in seeing this movie. I didn't like how the movie portrayed life in Brooklyn then to be one big hell hole. I wasn't even alive back in the time period this movie is supposed to take place, but I know from seeing documentaries and talking to people who were alive back then that all of Brooklyn was not like that. Not by a long shot. There were some really beautiful areas and just regular, everyday decent people trying to make a living.
Nothing like the scum in this movie. I know for sure you had a lot of ignorant, sleazy people back then but they only showed one side to working class people living in Brooklyn. I find it hard to believe most people behaved and lived that way. So no, i'd have to say that life in Brooklyn was NOT that sleazy at all.
Most people as I said back then were just regular, decent working class people.
But I disagree with you about one thing. This reminds me NOTHING of "Saturday Night Fever". Yes, those guys in SNF were ignorant and racist, but they were still no where near as bad as the awful piece of crap men in this movie. The characters in this movie were downright violent, dangerous thugs.
The characters in SNF were silly and out to have a good time, but not the violent animals that were in this movie. Not one of those manin characters had any redeeming qualities whatsoever.
"And when the groove is dead and gone, love survives, so we can rock forever" RIP MJ
I don't think Selby was trying to condemn Brooklyn, or "all" of the people in Brooklyn. This was about specific characters and situations.
shareBrooklyn is a borough of 2.5 million people and dozens of diverse neighborhoods and areas. Some of it, even today, is like the wild west. In the early 1950s the area around the Brooklyn Navy Yard was particularly rough and Brooklyn had, literally, hundreds of gangs. I read a lot of naive posts on these boards about poor, urban neighborhoods. There is hardly any police presence unless a high profile crime occurs. Selby's vision is highly stylized and compressed into a short film (as opposed to the long, run-on narrative of the book) which contributes to the sense of extremity, but I don't think there was ever a dull moment and this film nailed a unique, hard to capture moment in urban post-war America.
shareI'm interested in how you might compare this view of Brooklyn with the many views of Brooklyn from gangster films, especially something more period related, like On the Waterfront.
There's usually a real toughness and grittiness to all of those portrayals. Of course, they're all portrayals designed to elicit a specific mood, so it's not like you're getting a statistically accurate picture, either.