134. The Panic in Needle Park

Song - Kronenburg Park (Frank Boeijen)

Movie: The Panic in Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg, 1971)

There is a moment early on in The Panic in Needle Park, when I thought this was on its way to becoming one of my favorite films. Helen (Kitty Winn) has just been released from the hospital following complications from an abortion. Outside she is met by Bobby, played by Al Pacino as a youthfully naive rascal, a motor-mouthed petty thief whose tough guy pose masks his gentleness and insecurities. She knows that he lies, steals, uses drugs and doesn't have a permanent place to live, but she finds him cool, funny and interesting and falls for him. From the opening scenes with the callous guy who impregnated her, it is clear that these are the kinds of men she is attracted to. She is also presented as an independent confident woman who knows what she wants and knows how to handle such relationships and their potential consequences. And Bobby seems better than her ex. When after few days of living together, with her still recovering from het visit to the hospital, she tells him it's OK to have sex now, he looks at her, sees that she is not ready, and decides to wait. The camera stays in close-up on Pacino's face during his contemplations and it's clear that this is not a dilemma he usually has. His desire struggles with his newly found love for Helen. We get the feeling that he's been with many women before, but that this time things feel different. And so he decides to wait.

It was at that point that I fell in love with the film and thought it was going to be a great romantic drama between two youngsters who are smart, good and confident, but not as smart, good and confident as they think they are, or need to be, to survive hustling on the streets of New York. Yet, what it ends up being is a harsh drama about (heroin) addiction and how it hurts and devastates lives. In fact, Schatzberg does his best do stop the film from becoming a romantic drama. He always keeps the characters at just enough of a remove to never let you swoon over them, never turns them into sentimentalised tragic heroes. You are supposed to think of them as a bunch of drug users who ruin their lives, not as doomed lovers. The film at times plays almost like a fly-on the wall semi-documentary of the drugs scene in 70's New York, with long scenes in which we see how drug users prepare their high, close ups of needles going in arms, and a strange, almost silent, scene in which Pacino observes how cocaine is produced by the poorest of New Yorkers working in grim basements. Meanwhile, the police knows exactly what's going on, but can't produce any evidence. 

What makes this approach truly work is that while Bobby and Helen are not 'glorified' as romantic heroes, they are also not judged, The film objectively presents their irresponsible behavior and their downward spiral without blaming them (or anyone else) for it. It also doesn't preach, patronise or condescend, but instead always finds a way to highlight their humanity. Sometimes even with humor. When Helen has to turn to prostitution to buy drugs, she ends up in bed with a young kid for whom it's his first time. We only see the aftermath with the boy trying to act as an experienced lover; it's one of the funniest scenes of its kind I've seen, without it breaking the atmosphere of the film. 

It's easy to see how this film helped Al Pacino turn into a star (and btw if they ever decide to make a snooker epic they should use some of that Irishman de-aging technology to make Pacino play Ronnie O'Sullivan. Not only does he look like him here, he also shares many of his tics, gestures and temperament). What is harder to see is how it didn't turn Kitty Winn into a star. The film really belongs to her, playing the kind of character women rarely get to play. You could argue that Pacino is a 'homme fatale' here, whose charisma turns an intelligent, emancipated woman to the 'dark side'. Yet while she is clearly the victim, she is never victimised, The film gives her agency to make her own decisions, and perhaps emphasises that a bit too much, straining to make the point that a woman making a conscious independent choice to self-destruct is making a feminist choice. Through her nuanced, subtle performance, Winn both enforces and negates that idea. All of this eventually leads to a fantastic, surprising and melancholic final scene, that reminded me in spirit of the ending of Five Easy Pieces (released one year before this), despite the fact that it reaches the opposite conclusion. Finally, having seen this, The Last Thing He Wanted (a more interesting film than Rotten Tomatoes would make you believe) and the Netflix documentary on her life, I am very curious to explore more of Joan Didion's work.