THE PRISONER OF SECOND AVENUE

US, 1976, 98 minutes, Colour.
Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft, Gene Saks, Elizabeth Wilson, Florence Stanley.
Directed by Melvin Frank.

The Prisoner of Second Avenue: popular New York playwright Neil Simon knows the city and its people well, especially their foibles and their humour. There is often a serious point just beneath the witty lines and the funny situations, though it seldom obtrudes. The lines and the situations are here as usual, but well served by Jack Lemmon and Anne Bancroft. But the intensity is much closer to the surface and the pressures (mechanical, financial, professional and social) of the rat-race are made frighteningly threatening (in the vein of "The Out of Towners"). Nervous breakdown is satirised but also shown to be an inevitable consequence of the imprisonment of the city.

1. The irony of the title and its tone for the themes? Second Avenue and the emphasis on New York? The modern urban prisoner?

2. The contribution of the colour, Panavision, New York locations, musical background?

3. Was it evident that the film was based on a play? The sets? The strong emphasis on characters, lines and wit?

4. what was the main impact on audiences? Comedy, enjoyment, serious message about modern life in New York? An integration of all of these? How successful?

5. Mel as a character? What kind of man, a New York run, an American? A businessman trying to cope? The victim of small exasperations, work, home? His relationship with his wife? How likeable a man? Worthy of sympathy? The modern everyman?

6. The film's portrayal of the nature of breakdowns? Helplessness, self-pity? Victimisation even to robbing? How pitiable? How accurate the analysis? How much of a caricature?

7. The effect of the change of role on Mel? Psychiatry? The irony of his unemployed and idle state?

8. The importance of the visit to Harry's? The past and jealousy? The present contrasts? The picture of American success based on enterprise and money?

9. How necessary was it for something positive in Mel's life? What made him change ultimately?

10. The portrayal of Edna? As an American woman, housewife, the possibility of a career? Her support of her husband? Her sharing exasperations, fears? The nature of her support? Her working? The burglary? Her success and Mel's decline? Her dismissal and the repetition of situations?


11. The comedy and irony of appealing to Mel's sisters for money? The comment on these characters?

12. The film's reliance on the detail of people: the people upstairs, hostesses, the office, the sacked people, the psychiatrist, the youth in the park etc? What did each contribute in terms of character, comedy, theme?

13. The importance of the detail of incidents: Mel's idleness, Edna's exasperation, the people upstairs and the climax?

14. What commentary on the modern world did the film offer? About urban experience. the mechanised world, human values? How pessimistic was the film? Where did its optimism lie?