The Prisoner of Second Avenue

1974 US
Dir: Melvin Frank
Str: Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, Gene Saks

We seem to have lost the mechanism by which people can
feel the alterations between different meaning levels.
I am living in one of the largest cities all over the world; that is, Tokyo. In my opinion, Tokyo has drastically changed during the last 30 years. The reason why I think so might be slightly affected by the fact I was a kid 30 years ago. For, it would be natural to surmise that the view point of a child would be utterly different from the one of grown-ups. Yet, it, even so, wouldn't be so wrong if I said Tokyo has lost the dimension of depth, or rather should say some touch, for dwellers living there, and become inescapably two-dimensional. There would be many factors bringing about this phenomenon; for instance, no one cares for his neighbors any more, or such kind of well known circumstantial explanations. But mainly what I want to say here regarding this movie is not such, but about the loss of stratification of various meaning levels. These days, all things looks flat at least in Tokyo. No place we can run into when we've felt boredom in our life. You might say, in that case, just get drunk. But this is exactly the problem of alcoholics today. We certainly need the mechanism by which for us to be able to feel the alterations between different meaning levels, namely, the feeling of transitions in time and space. Why festivity has been considered so important to retain the stability of community in tradinional cultures of almost all the world should be carefully examined. It has supplied this alterations of meaning levels for the people living in that culture holding festivity so that the people shouldn't be insanely bounded up with just one level of an ordinary life. However, I must admit it's rather difficult to clearly explain why the alterations of meaning levels is necessary to sustain one's mental health. Though I know this is an evasion, for now I can't explain it clearly. Only I can say for the time being is, it's just my hunch formed through the readings of several psychological and anthropological books. Anyhow, these days, Tokyo seems to have lost this ability to supply its residents with this precious mechanism. Wherever we go anywhere in Tokyo any time, it's exactly the same as every other place in every other time. This is utterly insane. Uniformity and homogeneity are dominant all over the place. But, the most horrible aspect of all these lies in the fact we, by ourselves, have succeeded in imprisoning ourselves in such a situation so tightly that it has become almost impossible for us to extricate ourselves from the situation by our own volition alone. Watching The Prisoner of Second Avenue, audience will be able to confirm this phenomenon already happening in New York city in 1970s.
If the story is true, no one won't like to live in New York
city.
Essentially, The Prisoner of Second Avenue is based upon Neil Simon's stage play. Therefore, most of the scenes are rather limited to one location, one room of an apartment situated near Central Park in New York city. Main characters are, likewise, limited to just three; Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, and Gene Saks. Thus, it should be mentioned that whatever is applicable to the movies based upon Neil Simon's plays could be also applicable to this movie, and, therefore, it's most likely that the movie, itself, might select its audience from the very first. Anyway, I start to explain the plot. The story has Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft as city dwellers of New York city. They are living in an apartment near Central Park. Jack Lemmon is, as usual, portrayed as a somewhat neurotic person. He is easily disturbed by the presence of his neighbors, one of whom is airline stewardesses living at the very next door isolated by just a thin wall that easily cracks by a banging, and they are always bringing hockey players or basketball players or that sort of persons into their room, and making noises till midnight. He even notices the smell of stinking garbage rising all the way up to 14 stories high. On top of that, one day, he is fired from his company, and, as a final blow, robbed of all his properties except a khaki pants and a golf cap while his wife is going shopping just 5 minutes. Sometimes, he reluctantly goes to his brother's (played by Gene Saks) place located upon in the country area. But, as he is too much accustomed to the life of a big city, he seems to be utterly incompetent to adapt himself to the mode of country life. In short, his internal clock seems to have so perfectly been adjusted to the clock of the big city New York. Although he has lost his job, his wife, instead, gets a job, and, therefore, he comes to the conclusion he should linger in and around his home. Eventually, he incubates a cockamamy theory that some carefully conceived economic and political plot is surreptitiously undertaken to undermine the working class of the United States, to which the reason of his unemployment is to be attributed. No wonder his wife is worried about his mental condition, and conceives a plan to organize a summer camp facility, even though his brother's remark that it's riduculous for such a sick person like him to run a summer camp seems to be absolutely right. Therefore, she begs money from his brother when he has come to the apartment to offer help for Lemmon. Eventually, his brother brings a check, but he tears it up. At the final scene, shortly after his wife also appears to have lost her composure, and has started to bang the shower with a brush, that has ceased functioning due to the shortage of water supply, snow starts falling. According to the final narration, in order to deal with this unexpected natural phenomenon, people starts to work coopearively for the first time in ages. What a cynical comment! People cooperate only when something unexpected has come out. But, it's true these days.
One of the problems of modern day urban life resides in the
point it doesn't allow us to make a change of pace.
The Prisoner of Second Avenue is meant to be a commedy. By this reason, what is depicted here mightn't seem so serious. But, considering the situation of the real world in recent years, we, or at least I, can't simply laugh at all those meant-to-be-funny scenes in this movie. Because we should be regarded as more or less suffering from the same symptoms even if we had a job, and didn't have noisy neighbors. For example, wherever we go, all things are organized by uniformly measured time scale. In the movie, even Jack Lemmon's fancy psychiatrist measures his session time by his wristwatch. Wherever we go, things are organized in bureaucratic ways. In the movie, Jack Lemmon will have to comply with the rules of bureaucracy when he goes to the public employment security office. In short, all things are organized uniformly, and no way out of this smothering trap. But, the worst of all is, we, ourselves, are so deeply tied down to this situation that we have long been incapable of adapting ourselves to other modes of life styles. In the movie, Jack Lemmon can't accept the mode of rural life (I'm not going to argue whether or not the rural life of modern days is essentially different from the urban life, and still preserving the essences required for sustaining emotional stability. I rather doubt it. But, this issue is far beyond the reach of this review.). Briefly saying, one of the problems of modern day urban life resides in the point it doesn't allow us to make a change of pace. Mechanical clock, that would be the most suitable image for compulsive urban life.
The movie The Out-of-Towners depicts the dreary situations of
urban life in a reverse way.
To further explicate this point; that is, how urban life of modern era is disastrous and detrimental to its dwellers, I am going to pick up another movie, which is also based upon Neil Simon's play, and in which Jack Lemmon also appears. That is The Out-of-Towners. This movie depicts such dreary situations in a big city in a reverse way. In this movie's case, Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis are living in a country town situated in Ohio, and some day they visit New York to meet an executive to ensure his promotion. But, as they are completely unaccustomed to urban life, and have absolutely no clue about what's going on around them, whatever they do produces the results they never want, and they can't change such situations by their own volition. On the contrary, the more they try to resist the situation, the more they become involved deeply into unholy mess of the situation. Firstly, their plane can't land at New York airport, and go to Boston where they can't find their luggage that was stuck on the converer belt in Ohio airport. After they have managed to get on a train bound for New York, they notice they can't sit. After they have reached the hotel they reserved, they find out the hotel has given away the room to other persons. And, they are mugged by a crook who has firstly approached them disguising the kindest person in New York. The list goes on and on and on until, at last, they decide not to live in New York even if it means they must forfeit the right to have his salary doubled. In short, this movie is about persons who can't adjust themselves to urban life, which is the other way around of The Prisoner of Second Avenue that is depicting persons who can't get out of the traps of urban life. Before 1970s, I guess, though I'm not so sure about this, there are not so many of this kind of movies that is handling dreary aspects of urban life probably because, before then, urban life was considered to be dream life, and no doubt about it. "Country life=miserable, Urban life=sophisticated and rich", probably this simple scheme, I presume, must have become unsustainable in 1970s.
Jack Lemmon's cockamamy theory might have some truth in
it.
At this point, I feel I should clarify one point. That is, it would be no wonder someone considered the situations described above would vary culture to culture. It's partly true. However, as far as urban life is concerned, probably there would be not so much a difference between different cultures, though I'm not so sure about other countrys' urban life. For, I presume, in any nation, formation of modern day's urban life is heavily affected by the schemes based upon economic infrastructure that, in turn, are based upon capitalistic view point. Though, for now, I don't have any concrete evidence currently at hand proving the point there should be close connection between modern economics based upon captalistic view point and homogeneously organized urban life (books written by Anthony Giddens might help), I'm thinking there certainly should be. I don't think, therefore, Jack Lemmon's theory about the plot is a completely groundless delusion, though I guess the plot couldn't be consciously conceived by a particular person or group or organization as Lemmon is deliriously thinking, but might be intrinsically attached to the current economic system.
We as well as Jack Lemmon is prisoners of urban life. We
should well consider what "second avenue" of the title
stands for.
By the way, I remember the famous cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall classified cultures into two categories. One of which is low context cultures, the most typical example of which is an American culture. Another one is high context cultures, the most typical example of which is a Japanese culture to which obviously I belong. According to Hall, in the countries low context cultures dominate, many aspect of ordinary life should be determined in quite an explicit way, such as by statutory regulations, or by written documents. On the other hand, in the countries high context cultures dominate, most aspects of life should be determined by untold convention or preset context. Though there are many advantages and disadvantages in either type of culture, such symptoms as described in preceding paragraphs are liable to be attributed to the low contextness of a given culture, for high context cultures seem to require the richness of contexts, and, therefore, demand each person should involve himself into activities that should eventually constitute high contextness. But, this high contextness alone can't prevent the declination of multi-layered formation of various meaning levels either. Japan, which is regarded by Hall as one of the most highly context-oriented cultures also appears to be suffering those symptoms. When I was a kid, I remember urban areas were constituted in more multi-layered way. For example, once entering into a back alley of some open street, I could find out completely different dimension to the open street. At the back alley, we could locate "yatai" which means in Japanese a kind of food stand, and eat various kind of foods that was totally different from today's standard, say MacXXXXX hamburgers. There certainly were magical transitions between open streets and back alleys. Of course, there exists, even now, back alleys in Tokyo. But, these transitions seem to have vanished. No transitions between multiple layers of meaning levels, because there has survived only single layer of just one meaning level. I presume this is an extremely sad fact. People can't live in uniformly and homogeneously organized environment. Jack Lemmon's mental illness arises from such an environment. And, to make matters worse, as he has been so perfectly molded by that environment that he can't escape from it by his own volition. I know I am here talking about this movie more than what is actually depicted. But, anyway, as the title suggests, he is the prisoner of second avenue, and we should well consider what this "second avenue" stands for here. Lastly, it should be noted for your reference that F. Marray Abraham and Sylvester Stallone appear in brief scenes. Especially regarding the latter, it's very funny to watch later day's Rocky and Rambo mugged and knocked out by middle age Lemmon.

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