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The Night They Raided Minsky’s hit Blu-ray on Feb. 24th from Olive Films
Since my teen years, director William Friedkin’s involvement in a project has perked my ears up and made me take notice. The French Connection was one of the first films I ever saw when starting to seek out potential “great” films beyond the fare being peddled to me in multiplexes as a 90s teen. He’s simply one of American cinema’s great masters, and if this was an opinion I formed in my teen years (and therefore virtually useless), then he’s done nothing but further cement that status, cranking out fascinating later work such as Killer Joe, which proves his ferociousness of vision hasn’t dulled with age. And yet somehow, after taking in masterpiece after masterpiece of his such as the much heralded Exorcist, the aforementioned French Connection, or the recently widely re-discovered Sorcerer, I somehow still haven’t doubled down and seen every last one of his films. It is a wrong that I must right. So when Olive Films announced they’d be releasing his 1968 film The Night They Raided Minsky’s for the first time on Blu-ray, I knew I had to jump at the chance to give it a spin.
And you know what? As much as I did enjoy the film, this is going to be one of those reviews where I have to be painfully honest about myself. I’m not really into musicals. I’m not really into movies about “the theater”. And I’m not really into burlesque. The Night They Raided Minsky’s is a musical about life in the theater set in a burlesque. So… it had a lot to overcome in order to win me over. It isn’t that I hate joy or fun, I just have to work extra hard to even appreciate the best and most classical musicals. And even when I do value and appreciate them for their contribution to entertainment history, they rarely resonate with me on a personal level that would let me call them a “favorite”. And such is the case here with Minsky’s.
What the movie does have going for it is formidable. It’s got Jason Robards in the lead role as Raymond Paine: a cad and an entertainer who, while being the opposite of trustworthy, at least wrestles with himself before attempting to bed the newly arrived Amish girl (Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel) who wants to be a dancer and who is the object of affection of his trusted stage partner Chick Williams (Norman Wisdom). Everything in that sentence does happen in Minsky’s, as well as a squabble between Minsky senior and Minsky Jr (Elliot Gould) over the nature of the burlesque shows and the small matter of the rent being due to Senior. Then you’ve got Denholm Elliott running around fuming about the lewd and suggestive burlesque shows who is looking for any excuse to raid the place. There’s also a gangster who hangs around looking for girls and whom Gould is hoping will invest in the place. Oh, and Rachel’s harsh Amish father is also storming around 1920s New York to track down his runaway daughter. All these spinning plates are kept afloat deftly by Friedkin and screenwriters Arnold Schulman, Sidney Michaels, and Norman Lear. Did I mention that the madcap nature of it all is only exacerbated by the fact that Minsky’s does, in fact take place solely on the night in which it was raided? And in the midst of a day packed full of theatrical showtimes?
There’s an undeniable, almost perpetual motion to the feature. Rachel’s quest to become a dancer is an innocent one, and we’ll slowly watch as Raymond’s scallywaggery charms us, charms Rachel, and ultimately leads to what is promised us in the opening title cards… a devoutly religious girl unwittingly inventing the strip tease. But on top of that the movie is also about the end of the booming 20s and the end of a certain kind of sweaty innocence that was burlesque. We know it is about this because Friedkin is constantly cutting away to real archival 1920s New York footage and then dropping us back into our own story with a transitionary shot designed to look like the archival footage which then pops into full color. It actually happens so often that it does become distracting. And finally, the movie is about the thrill of live performance. Our characters are regularly having madcap antics behind the curtain only to be swept onto the stage where they’re forced to perform totally other madcap antics for a rowdy crowd.
The crowd in Minsky’s is perhaps one of the most interactive and vital crowds I’ve ever seen in a narrative feature set in a theater. Generally theater audiences in these types of films are darkly lit so as to not be distracting, or today they’d most likely be augmented by computers. Here in Minsky’s, Friedkin seems to have headed to the local porn theater and grabbed the most authentic looking folks he could find to populate his movie screen. There’s fat slobs eating enormous hot dogs and toothless gentlemen oogling and smiling and it all feels fantastically interactive with our characters up on the stage. There are faces in that crowd that tell their own story just by having the camera fall on them.
I mildly enjoyed all the breakneck zaniness of it all. I fell as in love with Britt Ekland as all the guys at the burlesque did. I laughed a few times at some of the comedic song and dance numbers, and even more often at Robards’ embodiment of this bygone stage conman. Friedkin did a fine job of injecting it all with a verve and the screenplay moves along at a speedy clip while also exploring the world of 1920s New York through this one single burlesque theater on its most wacky night of all. But all that said, there’s no denying that this kind of stuff just isn’t really my thing. I’m glad to have watched the film and find value in it the way I would anything that Friedkin crafted. I doubt I’ll be revisiting Minsky’s anytime soon, but appreciated my visit there well enough.
The Package
Olive Films is doing the Lord’s work as far as their release slate goes. On February 24th alone (the release date of this disc), they released 5 titles, all of which were making their debuts on Blu-ray. I’ve often heard of the films, and just as often have not. But they almost always feature name actors and look to be unearthed gems that I routinely want to track down. The Cinapse team has been having a field day covering a bunch of their releases and couldn’t be happier to see new rounds of announcements being made every month. While the Blu-ray releases are often fairly barebones, as is the case here with Minsky’s featuring only a trailer, the movie itself looked quite nice as far as its digital transfer goes, and as an overall fan of the Blu-ray format, I’m just thrilled to see them releasing exciting titles that may not have been the highest in demand by the widest general audience. They’re putting these movies out there for the world to re-evaluate in the high definition age, and I applaud the work.
And I’m Out.