Review of The Panic in Needle Park (1971) by Jenna L — 10 Aug 2008

The cold, unremitting film is a bleak depiction of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Sherman Square in New York City, Sherman Square being the park in the title. Jerry Schatzberg, the filmâ??s director, frames the model sober, matter-of-fact ambiance of 1970s American cinema. The film is subdued, just like itâ??s drug-injected characters, with no music at all throughout, his camera never intrudes, and his story glamorizes nothing and betrays nothing.

Against this sumptuously grainy backdrop of urban decay is an unfussy love story between a young junkie hustler played by Al Pacino in his first film role, and a restless woman played by Kitty Winn who finds herself attracted to him. She becomes an addict, and life goes downhill for them both as their addictions intensify. This makes me chuckle, but itâ??s one of the most interesting romances Iâ??ve ever seen in a movie. Thereâ??s nothing about it that is assumed or forced, and in fact it turns out to be an inseparable relationship between the two junkies, for if they were not junkies, they would be bound to the same oppression and loss of oneself to which the remaining mass of young lovers are subject due to their conventional steps and impersonal chance decisions without strength and without fruit. Pacino and Winn depend on each other through thick and thin, before and after betrayals, contingent upon each other for each fix.

Young Pacino had the waiting, weighing, obscure guilelessness that perfectly applies to his role, an idle social dreg whose magnetic, seemingly ingenuous come-hitherness draws others into his degenerate world. His counterpoint is Kitty Winnâ??s grabbing portrayal of pathetic desperation out of reach of any self-respect.