Directed by Uli Edel (The Baader Meinhof Complex, Christiane F.).
Written by Hubert Selby Jr. and Desmond Nakano. Excellent Cinematography was by Stefan Czapsky (The Thin Blue Line, Edward Scissorhands), Music by Mark Knopfler.
Filming was in Brooklyn roughly around the Gowanus Canal, with Red Hook and the Sunset Park sections of Brooklyn on either side of it.
Here's another Noir film that's off, twisted, a Bizzaro Brooklyn Nightmare. If you approach it that way, i.e., as a dream / nightmare of 1950's Brooklyn, you don't have to worry about it making sense or being realistic especially to your own experiences if you were around NYC in the 1950's.
Reading Hubert Selby's novel clears things up quite a bit. All the individual stories ring true as individual stories. That is the way the "novel" is put together. It's just a collection of Selby's partly truth and partly fiction short stories that take place around the Sunset Park neighborhood, Brooklyn.
It's when Desmond Nakano in the screenplay interweaves all these short stories that the film becomes bizzaro. So let's get down to the why of it.
Selby was a Kentucky coal miner's son. The coal miner and his wife moved to Brooklyn. The coal miner became a merchant seaman. Let that cultural paella simmer.
Sunset Park was predominantly two-story on basement row houses. One family owned the house and rented out the other apartment. If it was similar to some other neighborhoods in Queens and the Bronx that I was familiar with. Some of those basements were probably converted into illegal studio apartments. On the big avenues the row houses were built with commercial space on the ground floors.
The waterfront had docks, warehouses, along with The Bush Terminal and the Army Terminal, all big employers. The first residents of Sunset Park were initially Irish, German, Italians or Eastern European Jews, after 1910 there were a couple of growing Scandinavian districts "Finntown" and "Little Norway." After WWII (around the era that Last Exit To Brooklyn is set in) the Scandinavian population was replaced by upwardly mobile Irish and Italians moving out of the waterfront district which soon evolved into a ghetto with prostitution and drug use. The replacement population was predominantly Puerto Ricans. Sounds almost like the Sharks and the Jets of Westside Story.
So Hubert Selby is a young adult raised in Sunset who quit school at 15 during WWII to work the docks before eventually also becoming a merchant seaman in 1947.
After being diagnosed with tuberculosis he's taken off ship his ship and is in and out of public hospitals for the next ten years. he finally meets a childhood friend who became a writer. The friend encourages Hubert to write (since he couldn't really do anything else) and wrote about what he knew of that changing waterfront district of Sunset Park and wrote in a fast, stream-of-consciousness style. His first story was "The Queen Is Dead," in 1958.
Last Exit to Brooklyn stars Stephen Lang as Harry Black (Manhunter), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Miami Blues, Twin Peaks TV Series 2017) as Tralala, Burt Young (Across 119th Street, Chinatown, Once Upon A Time in America) as Big Joe.
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| Stephen Lang as Harry Black |
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| Jennifer Jason Leigh as Tralala |
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| Burt Young as Big Joe |
With Peter Dobson as Vinnie, Jerry Orbach (Cop Hater, Delusion) as Boyce, Stephen Baldwin as Sal, Frank Military as Steve, Jason Andrews as Tony, James Lorinz as Freddy, Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) as Al, Maia Danziger as Mary Black, Camille Saviola as Ella, Ricki Lake (Hairspray) as Donna, Cameron Johann as Spook, John Costelloe as Tommy, Christopher Murney as Paulie, Alexis Arquette as Georgette, Zette as Regina, Mark Boone Junior as Willie, Rutanya Alda as Georgette's mother and Hubert Selby Jr. as a cab driver.
Just remember in the novel each story is stand alone (see Novel vs. Film below)
The Film's Story
Three soldiers from the Army Terminal walk past a group of strikers standing by the gated entrance of a factory. The strikers are standing around a burn barrel, their placards leaning up against the company fence.
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They are looking for some food and maybe a good time down at the Alex the Greeks, a local greasy spoon, open all night luncheonette, after getting thrown out of Willies a nearby dive bar for fighting with some sailors over some whores. Vinnie and his boys are shooting the shit in Alex's when Vinnie and Tralala a hooker get into a fight out on the sidewalk.
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One of the soldiers makes a crude remark about how northerners like fucking in the streets. When Vinnie calls out his crew and they pile out of The Greeks.
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The soldiers outnumbered, start running up the street towards the Army Terminal gate with the hoodies chasing after them in a car. One soldier peels off from the rest and tries to climb a fence but is pulled down and gets pummeled.
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The cops show up, the MP's show up. It's the hoods against the doggies. Harry, (who looks weird right from the get go) is a local strike leader, walks over and tells the cops that he saw it all and the soldiers started it. The cops break up the confrontation, the MP's take the soldiers back to the terminal.
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Back in the luncheonette Vinnie runs into Georgette a gay transvestite. Georgette has the hots for Vinnie. Vinnie and the boys tolerate Georgette because he is their supply of bennies and marijuana.
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We jump back to Harry who is, we soon find out, is a closeted gayman. He's drunk and walking back to his flop. He stops to take a leak against a building. Georgette comes out of nowhere and starts BS-ing with Harry all the while obviously staring at Harry's johnson. Of course this gets Harry sort of even more worked up. He's got this "wound too tight" look in his eyes.
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| Alexis Arquette as Georgette |
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Finally getting home, Harrys biggest anxiety is facing his wife. He hates her sex, he hates her touch.
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| Maia Danziger as Mary Black |
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| And Mary is hot to trot |
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| Mary hitting the sheets |
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| Guess who? |
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We jump to Selby's story "And Baby Makes Three" Here we meet Big Joe and his family, and a kid named Spook who wants a motorcycle so bad that he always wears an army surplus flight cap.
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| Ricki Lake as Donna and Camille Saviola as Ella Suzy, Joe's daughter is seven months pregnant and he doesn't know. Joe just thought that she was getting fatter. Tommy a guy with a motorcycle is Spooks idol. |
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| John Costelloe as Tommy the Daddy |
Tommy works with Joe and his brother at the factory. This segment offers a lot of laughs and connects to the rest of the film by the labor strike at the factory where Joe and Tommy work, and by the kid Spook who is in love with Tralala, promising her the first ride on his cycle when he buys one.
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| Pregnant Donna |
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| Cameron Johann as Spook |
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We next get the story of the strike which segues into the "Tralala" story.
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| Jerry Orbach as Boyce |
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Tralala prides herself for being able to steal any man she sets her sights on. When she see a prospect she tells the barkeep to count to ten. She wears low cut tight sweaters that she pulls down so that she shows a lot of cleavage and focuses her gaze on the mark and smiles By ten the mark is buying her a drink.
In the film works at getting her marks stumbling drunk and then offering to give them a blowjob for a price and luring them into a vacant lot where Vinnie and his crew sneak up and knock the guy out before Tralala has to get down to business.
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| Willies |
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In the film works at getting her marks stumbling drunk and then offering to give them a blowjob for a price and luring them into a vacant lot where Vinnie and his crew sneak up and knock the guy out before Tralala has to get down to business.
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| Divvying up the loot |
It starts to go Noirsville for Tralala when Vinnie and the boys decide to be late and they all watch Tralala give the doggie she lured a blowjob, and they still demand the money the doggie paid her. It goes Noirsville for Harry when he goes with Vinnie and the hoods to booze, pot, and bennie party given by transvestite Goldie and there he meets Regina a gay man who likes Harry for his money and body.
Noirsville
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Novel vs Film
Last Exit to Brooklyn the novel is comprised of:
- Another Day, Another Dollar: A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night diner and get into a vicious fight with a group of Army soldiers on leave from the nearby Army Terminal. (No connection with Tralala or Harry at all, and the girl involved is Rosie in story)
- The Queen Is Dead: Georgette, a sassy transgender prostitute, is thrown out of the family home by her homophobic brother and tries to attract the attention of a ruthless hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrine-marijuana-booze party. Vinnie and his pals tolerate Georgette because they get their "bennies' and "pot" from Georgette. Georgette dies of a drug overdose after the party. (in the film Georgette is a junkie who nods out at the party and awakens to find Vinnie long gone. Going into hysterics Georgette then runs out in the street calling for Vinnie and gets hit by a car)
- And Baby Makes Three: A story told by an unknown narrator about a couple, Suzy and Tommy, who have a baby out of wedlock, and their wedding, and baby's christening party is quickly thrown by Suzy's parents. Spook,the kid with the motorcycle is only in this story. (No connection with the strike or anyone else, A pretty much stand alone story.)
- Tralala: The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitute who makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money after getting them pass out drunk. (In the film she is the bait who lures servicemen to a vacant lot. There she has them lean back against against an abandoned car where she is going to give them a blowjob. While the guy is leaning back and she kneels down and undoes his fly, Vinnie and the gang knock the guy out and they all divvy up what money he has. Later in the film Tralala picks up an officer with money who takes her to Manhattan hotel, where she likes the upgrade. He buys her new outfits to wear. She's hoping for a big payoff when the officer ships out, but all he gives her is a letter professing his love for her. In the novel after the officer ships out Tralala starts working Times Square. This change of neighborhoods and her increasing alcoholism lead her into an increasingly downward spiral. (In the film it's compressed into a short period of time.) In the novel it's more like years and Selby describes her decline. Selby tells us she goes from Times Square and Broadway bars to 8th Avenue, finally ending up on the South Street waterfront. She barely takes care of herself, Selby describes her face as a sea of blackheads and pimples poking through her makeup and her body covered with scabs.There on South Street, she ends up going with any bum who offers her flop to crash at. She finally goes back to Sunset Park. (Again, in the film Tralala goes back to Brooklyn within days and her old neighborhood. Back at Willies she starts showing off her new clothes and eventually her tits to everyone and gets a bit too friendly with a bunch of drunken bar patrons and servicemen telling them that she'll take them all on. It's a pretty heavy scene, she goes from actively yelling and encouraging the men to line up and fuck her to finally passing out and getting repeatedly gang-raped.) In the story she is left for dead in a vacant lot where even the neighborhood kids who find her the next morning put cigarettes out on her tits, pee on her, and poke at her vagina with a broomstick, the short story leaves us with the down note that she probably dies. (In the film all this happens to Tralala back in her neighborhood in Willie's and in the same vacant lot and abandoned car where she was luring her johns to be rolled. There she's found by motorcycle boy Spook who uses his sweater to cover her up. We last see her sitting up on the bench seat where she "pulled a train" hugging Spook.)
- Strike: Harry, is a lathe operator in a factory, who becomes a local official in the union. He is a closeted gay man, he hates and abuses his wife and pays no attention to his child. His wife has no clue but thinks that his standoffishness is part of his weird lovemaking routine. In the story she gets actually aroused to climax by brutal lovemaking sessions, to her it is some kind of pre coital mating dance or playacting. (In the film none of this is made apparent) Harry likes to boast of his status as shop steward and offers free beer on the union's expense to anyone in the neighborhood besides the union members. However he also uses union money for cab rides to Manhattan where he buy's the company of transvestites, drag queens, and gay men. He falls for Regina. When the union finds out about his embezzling he is immediately demoted. His lack of money causes his new "boyfriend" Regina to reject him. He goes on a rejection bender losing all his inhibitions finally trying to fellate a 10-year-old neighborhood boy. The boy runs away and Vinnie and the gang beat him up. (In the film Uli Edel's visual subtext practically gives us a crucifixion scenario. Are we supposed to feel sorry for Harry becoming a pedophile?)
- Landsend: Described as a "coda" for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project. (This last tale is mostly missing in action. In the film, one segment from this story "pissing out the window" is transferred to Big Joe )
In conclusion Uli Edel and Desmond Nakano by intertwining unrelated stories completely warps the past. It's bizzarro weird because it never would have happened like it's depicted. The various worlds written about by Selby never would have interacted as easily as is shown in the film in a working class neighborhood. Gays were closeted because it was, one, back then, against the law and two, being openly flamboyant could get you killed.
In Manhattan is where being gay was more tolerated and accepted, the outer boroughs not so much, but even there in Manhattan it would probably be only in certain neighborhoods.
The way the film plays out putting most of the story in Sunset Park doesn't ring true, and then the way the opening sequence is set up with Vinnie and the boys in cahoots with Tralala makes you wonder where the fuck is this hood gang when a local girl gets in trouble on their turf?
(But in the book remember Tralala is working solo).
The Noir visuals are powerful thanks to Stefan Czapsky's excellent Cinematography, Mark Knopfler's Morricone-ish sounding score is good but the flim really should have had a lot diegetic Sinatra, Dino, Tony Bennett, Jo Stafford, Perry Como, in both the luncheonette and Willis's dive bar. Even Selby writes about the locals were complaining about half of the songs on the jukebox where shit kicking tunes for the servicemen to play, who frequented the place. Worth at least one watch. 7/10
Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com)
Love stories are about people who find love in happy times. Tragedies are about people who seek love in unhappy times. "Last Exit to Brooklyn" makes a point of taking place in the early 1950s, when all of the escape routes had been cut off for its major characters. The union official cannot admit to being left wing. The strike leader cannot reveal he is homosexual. The father cannot express his love for his child, the prostitute cannot accept her love for the sailor, and the drag queen is not able to love himself. There isn't even any music to release these characters - rock 'n' roll is still in the future, and the pop ballads of the era mock the passions of everyday life. The characters drink and some of them do drugs, but they don't get high - they simply find the occasional release of oblivion.
The movie takes place in one of the gloomiest and most depressing urban settings I've seen in a movie. These streets aren't mean, they're unforgiving. Vast blank warehouse walls loom over the barren pavements, and vacant lots are filled with abandoned cars where mockeries of love take place. When Hubert Selby Jr. wrote the book that inspired this movie 25 years ago, it was attacked in some quarters as pornographic, but it failed the essential test: It didn't arouse prurient interest, only sadness and despair.
Why do I respond so strongly to movies like this - and "Barfly," "Taxi Driver," "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" and "Christiane F.," which was the previous film by the makers of "Last Exit to Brooklyn"? Most people hate movies like this. I think perhaps it is because no attempt is being made to force the characters and stories into comforting endings. The movies don't let me off the hook.
These are fellow human beings who suffer, who are limited in their freedom to imagine greater happiness for themselves, and yet in their very misery they embody human striving. There is more of humanity in a prostitute trying to truly love, if only for a moment, than in all of the slow-motion romantic fantasies in the world.
The movie takes place in a Brooklyn neighborhood torn by a bitter strike; most of the men work at the factory, and are unemployed by the dispute, but for Harry Black (Stephen Lang), a worker who has been hired to run the strike office, these are good times. He has an expense account to stock kegs of beer in the office, he has a telephone, and best of all he has an excuse to spend long hours away from the wife he does not love or understand. He is a homosexual, and he doesn't understand that, either, but strange feelings fill him when the neighborhood drag queen sashays by.
One of the striking workers is Big Joe (Burt Young), whose daughter (Ricki Lake) is pregnant. "She ain't pregnant - she's just fat!" Big Joe insists even in the eighth month, and yet when he discovers it is true he finds it his duty to beat up the responsible boy - beat him up, and then embrace him as a future son-in-law, and then beat him up some more at the wedding. He accepts the boy as his daughter's husband, and so the beatings are not really intended as hostile acts, you understand - just the price you have to pay in pain for the freedom of sex.
Sex and pain are linked throughout the movie. When Tralala (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the local prostitute, lures the boys from the Brooklyn naval yard into the vacant lots where she works, it's not for sex - it's so neighborhood guys can mug the young draftees and roll them. Tralala gets beaten up a lot, too, both physically and mentally.
She has been witness to so many loveless acts of sex that her own body is a thing apart. "I've got the best boobs in the West," she cries, as if they were not a part of her but some kind of award she won in a contest. When one sailor takes her seriously and falls for her, she moves into a Manhattan hotel with him for a few days' mockery of a real relationship. He's naive enough to believe it's love. She's almost sad enough.
But love and sex do not connect in this movie. When Harry Black, the strike leader, finally admits he is gay and expresses his love for the drag queen, he finds, as the sailor does, that the person he loves cares only for money. Eventually both Harry and Tralala end up in vacant lots, brutally punished, because of sex. The only difference is that Harry is attacked because he tries to have sex, and Tralala is punished through sex - through a horrifying gang rape.
Is there any love in this movie? Yes, in a sense. There is a rather simple-minded boy who wanders through the film, and idealizes Tralala and yearns after her in a goofy way, but she doesn't know what to do about him. How do you explain to an admirer that his love is misplaced - that really you don't deserve it? The performances are strong, true, and not a little courageous. One of the best is by Jerry Orbach (the Mafioso brother in "Crimes and Misdemeanors") who plays a union leader. At a time when McCarthyism is rampant and strikes are seen as a symptom of communist agitation, he tries to handle hotheads on both sides, and there is the sense that he is successful partly because he sticks to business; his personality doesn't have a sexual component.
Last Exit to Brooklyn was banned as a book and resulted in several obscenity cases in both the United States and England.
Remembering the book and now looking at the movie, I wonder what really upset people: Was it the sex, or just the lovelessness? The drugs, or just the despair? The violence, or its pointlessness? Don't most books prosecuted for sexual obscenity celebrate sex? This one argues that it's not worth the trouble - that you'll end up by breaking your heart.
Great review as always - Stunning cinematography
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