by Philippe Met
Senses of Cinema
Irrespective of his status as an American cinéaste maudit who is still largely ignored by mainstream audiences, most of all in his homeland, and has for the present time relocated to Italy, few other film directors beyond the likes of Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen have identified themselves, or been identified by critics, with New York than Abel Ferrara. In that sense, the title of the biography penned by Nick Johnstone, Abel Ferrara: The King of New York, (1) is no mere facetious overstatement, nor a facile echo of Ferrara’s 1990 film starring Christopher Walken as a drug kingpin freshly released from prison and eager to not only resume his “rightful” rank within Gotham’s gangland, but gain a political foothold in civil society, rub shoulders with the establishment and acquire an air of respectability in the eyes of “law-abiding citizens.” That Ferrara’s films provide a unique “underground” look at the dark side (perhaps as much in the sense of its crepuscular ambience and nocturnal life as of its seedy or dangerous underside) of The City That Never Sleeps can therefore hardly be disputed. The gritty streets of New York have long been the Bronx-born director’s personal, intimate turf. As a love letter to the Village of his youth in the late 60s sent from “Roma, [in] 2005” – a paean to a time and place both distant and close (to his heart) –, his foreword to Captured: A Film/Video History of the Lower East Side (2) bears testament to this emotional attachment and sense of organic belonging that nonetheless needs to be relived and/or reaffirmed by a constant criss-crossing of the length and breadth of this territory, be it by taxi, on foot or by subway – probably in that order of importance, based on the Rafi Pitts documentary, Abel Ferrara: Not Guilty (2003). Pitts struggles to follow Ferrara in his almost trance-like, circuitous roaming of the streets at night and well into the wee hours of the morning, including around such off-the-beaten-track, seemingly unpoetic or “unhip” areas as the Meatpacking District of New York (before, that is, its rehabilitation into part fashionable mecca, part aerial greenway in the last decade or so)…
In and of itself, being considered a master chronicler or documenter of seamy New York alongside such esteemed filmmakers as Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee, is arguably an eminently laudable achievement, especially when socio-political awareness overrides or supersedes exploitation kicks. It can also lead to a reductively monolithic, thus potentially misleading or distorting, characterization of Ferrara’s multi-faceted work and the larger issues it addresses. Admittedly, the city of New York serves as the diegetic setting for approximately 60% of his filmography so far, discounting his work for television or video, his docudramas (including the Manhattan-based Chelsea on the Rocks [2008] and Mulberry St. [2009]) (3) as well as his directorial debut in the guise of a short-lived hardcore pornographer (Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy [1976]). The films concerned are: The Driller Killer (1979); Ms. 45 (aka Angel of Vengeance, 1981); China Girl (1987); King of New York (1989); Bad Lieutenant (1992); The Addiction (1995); The Funeral (1996); ‘R Xmas (2001); Mary (2004); Go Go Tales (2007); and 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011) (4)… not to mention Welcome to New York, a fictionalized version of the infamous Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case, slated for theatrical release sometime in 2014. If all of the above titles tend to provide, aurally as well as visually, a distinctively immersive experience of the genius loci of a global power city that comes across as more of a character in its own right than a mere backdrop or a vehicle for local colour, this still leaves a fair number of feature films set in various other locales: from Miami (The Blackout [1997]) and Santo Domingo (Cat Chaser [1990]) to Hollywood (Dangerous Game [aka Snake Eyes, 1993]) to a military base (Body Snatchers [1993]) or cities around the world (New Rose Hotel [1998]).
In light of his electing at least part-time residence overseas, mostly as a matter of economic survival due to the dire depletion, if not exhaustion, of funding opportunities for maverick filmmakers like Ferrara stateside, a further distinction should be made among his later films between fictional setting and location shooting. Go Go Tales is a case in point. Transposing John Cassavetes’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) from Los Angeles to New York and set within the confines of a strip joint (supposedly fashioned after the defunct “Billy’s Topless” on Sixth Ave. and 24th St.), it was entirely shot in Cinecittà, except for the few scenes right outside the club for which a Rome street location was quite convincingly used. Conversely, it may be argued that some of his films that seem to derive and benefit the most, in terms of ambience, “authenticity,” “realism” and urban psychosis, from the myriad documentary-like scenes or seemingly stolen shots of New York’s underbelly (destitution, ethnic tension, crime, sex, and drugs) are primarily concerned with other objectives and considerations, at once more specific and broader. By way of illustration, the production notes on Bad Lieutenant – possibly the director’s most iconic and acclaimed opus, remade in 2009 by Werner Herzog and relocated to… New Orleans, ironically enough (5) (with Nicolas Cage stepping into Harvey Keitel’s shoes as the corrupt, drug-addled cop) – read: “[Abel Ferrara] had shot many of his films on the very same streets. But he focused this film more on the human soul than on New York. He wanted to emphasize that this could happen anywhere, not just in New York.”
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