The Panic in Needle Park

Given its pedigree, it’s surprising that The Panic in Needle Park has been so overlooked in the decades since its 1971 release. Director Jerry Schatzberg has enjoyed a modest career as a filmmaker (other films include Scarecrow, the heralded but largely unknown Puzzle of a Downfall Child, and the Willie Nelson vehicle Honeysuckle Rose), but his work as a photographer is widely recognized and includes the iconic cover shot of Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. First couple of hard-nosed sophistication Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne adapted the script from a novel by James Mills, and Dominick Dunne (of Vanity Fair fame) produced. The young, electric, and untested lead, Al Pacino, turned out to be the biggest star of the project—a year later, he’d enter the annals of cinematic superstardom as Michael Corleone. Legend has it that the producers of The Godfather wouldn’t greenlight his casting until Coppola screened Panic for them. Even so, the film itself—a portrait of two junkies in love—largely faded from memory, but it proves well worth revisiting.

Click here to read the rest of Emily Condon’s review of The Panic in Needle Park, which plays this week at New York’s Film Forum.

clarencecarter posted to Repertory on January 30, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

Hey J,

Yeah the film is playing this week at New York’s Film Forum. We’ll make that clearer in the review. We like to try and review rep films when and can and feel driven to (see also Bigger than Life, Made in U.S.A., etc).

By robbiefreeling on January 31, 2009

This review finds me pleased.  Thank you for shining a light on a movie whose relative obscurity has always miffed me.  But it’s also strange to find a repertory review pop up at random on the blog—is it on a screen somewhere in NYC?  Or does ReverseShot have designs on some kind of “forgotten canon?”

By jcshumate on January 31, 2009

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