Across 110th Street | |
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Directed by | Barry Shear |
Screenplay by | Luther Davis |
Story by | Barry Shear |
Based on | Across 110th 1970 novel by Wally Ferris |
Produced by | |
Starring |
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Music by | |
Production company | Film Guarantors |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date |
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Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $10 million [1] |
Across 110th Street is a 1972 American neo noir action thriller film directed by Barry Shear and starring Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Franciosa and Paul Benjamin. The film is set in Harlem, New York and takes its name from 110th Street, the traditional dividing line between Harlem and Central Park that functioned as an informal boundary of race and class in 1970s New York City.
Focusing on a heist, murder and a subsequent investigation, Across 110th Street takes inspiration from both the blaxploitation films of the 1970s as well as the film noir genre. Across 110th Street is remembered in part for its soundtrack, which features a classic song of the same name by Bobby Womack.
Jim Harris accompanies his partners to steal $300,000 from a Mafia-controlled policy bank in Harlem, disguising themselves as police officers. The robbery goes awry, leading to the deaths of seven men — three black gangsters, two Mafia members, and two police officers. Lieutenant William Pope, a straitlaced black police officer, is assigned to work on the case with Captain Frank Mattelli, a streetwise but aging Italian-American cop.
Despite Lieutenant Pope's commitment to working strictly by the book and asserting that he is in charge of the investigation, he struggles to restrain Mattelli. Mattelli, who receives money from Doc Johnson, the leader of black organized crime in Harlem, poses a challenge to Pope's authority. Over approximately twenty-four hours, Pope and Mattelli race against time to apprehend the criminals before they become targets of the Mafia, which is also on the hunt for Harris' crew. The Italians, led by Nick DiSalvio, a brutal capo, plan to torture the robbers as a deterrent to others attempting a similar heist.
Anthony Quinn, who also served as executive producer, originally wanted John Wayne and then Kirk Douglas for the lead role of Captain Mattelli. Both passed, as did Burt Lancaster, leaving Quinn to take the part. Additionally, he hoped to get Sidney Poitier to play Lt. Pope. Upon hearing the news, Harlem residents disagreed with the choice, claiming Poitier was too Hollywood and not urban enough for the role. Quinn relented, and Yaphet Kotto was chosen to play Pope. [2]
When planning the film, director Barry Shear was adamant that only by filming in real locations could he bring a suitably raw and genuine feel to its themes of gang warfare and bloody street violence. Hollywood colleagues warned him that New York was the worst city in which to film, due to labor costs and permit nightmares, and Harlem the worst part of New York, due to its status at that time as the most lawless ghetto in the US. Undeterred, Shear took on Fouad Said, an unrivalled expert in location shooting, as a co-producer. [3]
Said had cut his teeth as a cameraman on the TV series I Spy , which broke new ground for American television by mixing studio work with location footage shot all over the world; a feat made possible by abandoning the ubiquitous but unwieldy Mitchell cameras of the day in favor of the lightweight Arriflex 35 IIC. Said found out during principal photography that the first production model of the much-anticipated and groundbreaking Arriflex 35BL camera had just arrived in New York. Having established a long and successful relationship with ARRI over the I Spy years, Said persuaded Volker Bahnemann, at that time Vice President of the ARRI division in America, to allow his Across 110th Street crew one week to try out the 35BL, the first time the camera was used on a motion picture. [3]
The camera immediately revolutionized what they were able to achieve on the streets of Harlem. It was self-blimped and featured a dual-compartment coaxial magazine positioned at its rear, for perfectly shoulder-balanced handheld shooting. "It's a real winner," affirmed cinematographer Jack Priestley ASC at the time. "It's as quiet as a church mouse and has great flexibility, especially as it weighs only 33 lbs. I don't know what I would have done in a lot of spots without it, especially in those small rooms where we often had to shoot. You put it on your shoulder and walk around, bend down, sit down, hold it in your lap—everything. I think it's going to help the film industry tremendously." [3]
One week with the 35BL proved it to be such a valuable tool that Said negotiated keeping the camera for the last four weeks of filming. Camera operator Sol Negrin, later to become a respected cinematographer and ASC member, reported of the 35BL: "It was used in major sound sequences shot in confined quarters where it was impossible to use a large camera, but where we needed portability and quietness. We also used it on the rooftops of buildings in Little Italy—buildings that had no elevators. The low noise level of the Arriflex 35BL permits shooting sound sequences in confined quarters, thus eliminating the post-dubbing of dialogue that is usually necessary under such conditions." [3]
A combination of Fouad Said's radical location skills and ARRI's groundbreaking technology allowed Shear's dream of a realistic backdrop for his story to be accomplished. A staggering 95% of the movie was shot at a total of 60 different interior and exterior locations in Harlem. [3]
The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time when racial tensions ran deep, and often exploded into riots. In the summer of 1964, a riot erupted in Harlem after a white off-duty police officer shot and killed an armed black teenager in Yorkville, Manhattan. [4] The "hot summer" of 1967 saw riots rip through the country, in major cities throughout the West and the North, as black communities responded in anger to poverty and police brutality. [5] In 1968, just three years before the release of Across 110th Street, numerous businesses and storefronts in Harlem were set on fire as residents reacted in frustration and grief after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. [6]
The 1970s were also a time when feelings of black power were everywhere in African-American communities across the United States. The black power ethos entered even into the underworld of organized crime, as evident in Across 110th Street, where black gangsters like Doc Johnson are coming to believe that black people should control the organized crime circuits within their neighborhoods rather than the racist Mafia bosses. [7]
Across 110th Street portrays New York City of the 1970s, a decade when crime, drug use and poverty was at an all-time high. The city economy was broke, its infrastructure crumbling and pimps and prostitutes filled Times Square. [8] Harlem itself was a place of little opportunity. Middle class residents fled the neighborhood in large numbers, leaving the poor to abandoned buildings and empty storefronts. Burned out buildings were visible on nearly every block of Harlem's major avenues, 24% of the area's population was living on welfare, and between 1976 and 1978 the population of east and central Harlem fell by almost a third. [9] In 1971, an estimated 60% of Harlem's economic activity depended on cash flow from gambling — the illegal "numbers" racket controlled by organized crime. [10]
During a potent scene in the film, Jim Harris explains to his girlfriend why he was forced to turn to robbery to make ends meet. As a middle-aged black man, formerly incarcerated, with a health problem and no formal education or highly-paid skills, Harris' only options are to work a demeaning, low-paying job with no future or to turn to crime. Even the cop Mattelli justifies the bribes he receives as supplemental income for his meager wages as a police officer.
The film earned an estimated $3.4 million in North American rentals in 1973. [11]
Among contemporary reviews, Roger Greenspun of The New York Times wrote "It manages at once to be unfair to blacks, vicious towards whites and insulting to anyone who feels that race relations might consist of something better than improvised genocide ... By the time it is over virtually everybody has been killed—by various means, but mostly by a machine gun that makes lots of noise and splatters lots of blood and probably serves as the nearest substitute for an identifiable hero." [12] Variety wrote that the film "is not for the squeamish. From the beginning it is a virtual blood bath. Those portions of it which aren't bloody violent are filled in by the squalid location sites in New York's Harlem or equally unappealing ghetto areas leaving no relief from depression and oppression. There's not even a glamorous or romantic type character or angle for audiences to fantasy-empathize with." [13]
Gene Siskel gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote "The film breaks no new ground, remaining content to combine familiar elements from 'In the Heat of the Night' (modern black cop vs. traditional white cop) and at least a half-dozen urban melodramas in which Italians and blacks go at each other with guns and mouths blazing." [14] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post slammed the film as "a crime melodrama at once so tacky and so brutal that one feels tempted to swear out a warrant for the arrest of the filmmakers." [15] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "self-destructs by consistently selling out to stomach-churning displays of unrelieved violence... that the grisliness depicted so graphically in 'Across 110th Street' is true to life is undisputable; it's the manner and extent of its depiction on the screen that's deplorable." [16]
In 1973, veteran black Chicago journalist Lu Palmer opened his alternative newspaper Black X-Press Info Paper with a review of Across 110th Street. He reflected that the film was particularly thoughtful and well-acted compared to many other low-budget blaxploitation pictures of the era and noted that "this flick ought to be carefully studied — again, for its images and messages." [17]
Across 110th Street presently holds a score of 83% at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 18 reviews. [18]
Across 110th Street Soundtrack | ||||
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Soundtrack album by | ||||
Released | December 1972 | |||
Recorded | 1972 | |||
Genre | R&B | |||
Length | 30:13 | |||
Label | United Artists | |||
Producer | Bobby Womack | |||
Bobby Womack and J. J. Johnson chronology | ||||
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Singles from Across 110th Street | ||||
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The soundtrack of Across 110th Street reflects the mood and historical context of the film. The songs were written and performed by Bobby Womack, while the score was composed and conducted by J. J. Johnson. Made up of gritty and brooding funk, the soundtrack echoes the dark themes and imagery of the film.
The critically praised title song was a No. 19 hit on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart in 1973 and was later featured in Quentin Tarantino's 1997 blaxploitation homage Jackie Brown . Its lyrics reflect the broader themes of impoverishment and desperation in the film, where characters feel beaten down by poverty and must do whatever it takes to stay alive.
Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca, better known by his stage name Anthony Quinn, was an American actor. Born in Mexico to a Mexican mother and a first-generation Irish-Mexican father, he was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental virility" in numerous critically acclaimed films both in Hollywood and abroad. His notable films include La Strada (1954), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Guns for San Sebastian (1968), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), Across 110th Street (1972), The Message (1976), Lion of the Desert (1980), Jungle Fever (1991) and Seven Servants (1996). His starring performance in Zorba the Greek (1964) earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan in New York City, north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the east and north. Despite its name, it is generally not considered to be a part of Harlem proper, but it is one of the neighborhoods included in Greater Harlem.
Yaphet Frederick Kotto was an American actor for film and television. He starred in the NBC television series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999) as Lieutenant Al Giardello. His films include the science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), the science-fiction action film The Running Man (1987), the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973) in which he portrayed the main villain Dr. Kananga, and the action comedy Midnight Run (1988).
Arri Group is a German manufacturer of motion picture film equipment. Based in Munich, the company was founded in 1917. It produces professional motion picture cameras, lenses, lighting and post-production equipment. It is cited by Hermann Simon as an example of a "hidden champion". The Arri Alexa camera system was used to shoot several films that won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, including Hugo (2011), Life of Pi (2012), Gravity (2013), Birdman (2014), The Revenant (2015) and 1917 (2019).
110th Street is a street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is commonly known as the boundary between Harlem and Central Park, along which it is known as Central Park North. In the west, between Central Park West/Frederick Douglass Boulevard and Riverside Drive, it is co-signed as Cathedral Parkway.
Stephanie St. Clair was a racketeer who ran numerous enterprises in Harlem, New York in the early 20th century. St. Clair resisted the Mafia's interests for several years after Prohibition ended; she became a local legend for her public denunciations of corrupt police and for resisting Mafia control. She ran a successful numbers game in Harlem and was an activist for the black community. Her nicknames included: Queenie, Madame Queen, Madame St. Clair and Queen of the Policy Rackets.
Live and Let Die is a 1973 spy film, the eighth film in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by Guy Hamilton and produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, while Tom Mankiewicz wrote the script.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African American organized crime emerged following the first and second large-scale migrations of African Americans from the Southern United States to major cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and later the West Coast. In many of these newly established communities and neighborhoods, criminal activities such as illegal gambling, speakeasies and were seen in the post-World War I and Prohibition eras. Although the majority of these businesses in African-American neighborhoods were operated by African Americans, it is often unclear the extent to which these operations were run independently of the larger criminal organizations of the time.
Cotton Comes to Harlem is a 1970 American neo-noir action comedy film co-written and directed by Ossie Davis and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx. The film, later cited as an early example of the blaxploitation genre, is based on Chester Himes' novel of the same name. The opening theme, "Ain't Now But It's Gonna Be", was written by Ossie Davis and performed by Melba Moore. The film was one of the many black films that appeared in the 1970s and became overnight hits. It was followed two years later by the sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972).
Bone is a 1972 American black comedy crime film written, produced, and directed by Larry Cohen in his directorial debut. It stars Yaphet Kotto, Joyce Van Patten, and Andrew Duggan. The film tells the story of a home invasion perpetrated by Kotto's character, who soon realizes that his victims are less wealthy and far unhappier than they initially appeared.
Communication is the third studio album by American musician Bobby Womack. The album was released on September 15, 1971, by United Artists Records. It reached No. 5 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 20 on the Billboard Jazz Chart in 1972. It included the hit single, "That's The Way I Feel About Cha", which charted at No. 2 on the Billboard R&B Singles chart and No. 27 on the Billboard pop chart. The album became Womack's breakthrough spawning the hit single "That's The Way I Feel About Cha" and a favorite Womack album track, "(If You Don't Want My Love) Give It Back", which Womack recorded three times after the original, the first remake, a slower acoustic version, was issued on the soundtrack of the film, Across 110th Street, and an instrumental by J. J. Johnson's band. The fourth time Womack recorded it was with Rolling Stones singer and musician Ron Wood. Womack recorded his own versions of James Taylor's "Fire and Rain", Ray Stevens' "Everything Is Beautiful" and featured a spoken word monologue in his cover of the Burt Bacharach and Hal David standard, "(They Long To Be) Close to You".
"Across 110th Street" is a single by Bobby Womack, from the soundtrack and film of the same name that starred Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto.
Friday Foster is a 1975 American blaxploitation film directed by Arthur Marks and starring Pam Grier in the title role. Yaphet Kotto, Eartha Kitt, Scatman Crothers and Carl Weathers co-starred. It is an adaptation of the 1970–74 syndicated newspaper comic strip of the same name, scripted by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Jorge Longarón. This was Grier's final film with American International Pictures. The tagline on the film's poster is "Wham! Bam! Here comes Pam!"
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred African-American artists to reclaim the power of depiction of their ethnicity, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for African-American students to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
Fighting Back is a 1982 vigilante action thriller film written by Thomas Hedley Jr and David Zelag Goodman and directed by Lewis Teague. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Patti LuPone, Michael Sarrazin, Yaphet Kotto, David Rasche, Lewis Van Bergen, Earle Hyman, and Ted Ross.
Badge of the Assassin is a 1985 television film starring James Woods, Yaphet Kotto and Alex Rocco. It was directed by Mel Damski. The film first aired on the Columbia Broadcasting System network on November 2, 1985. The film's production company was Blatt-Singer Productions.
Orville H. Hampton was an American screenwriter who worked mostly in low-budget films, particularly for producers Robert E. Kent and Edward Small. A screenplay that he and Raphael Hayes wrote for One Potato, Two Potato (1964) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
110th Street may refer to: