Come Back, Africa (Lionel Rogosin, 1959)

Zachariah Mgabe in Come Back, Africa

Cast: Zachariah Mgabe, Vinah Bendile, Miriam Makebe, Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisani, Can Themba, Myrtle Berman, George Malabye, Morris Hugh, Hazel Futa. Screenplay: Bloke Modisani, Lewis Nkosi, Lionel Rogosin. Cinematography: Ernest Artaria, Emil Knebel. Film editing: Carl Lerner, Hugh A. Robertson. Music: Chatur Lal. 

Filmed surreptitiously and edited with skill, Lionel Rogosin's Come Back, Africa is everything a docufiction film should be, with the chief weakness being the fiction part. It's a revelatory exploration of apartheid in South Africa, concentrated on Johannesburg, that gets its focus by following the misadventures of Zachariah Mgabe, which is also the name of the actor who plays him. Zachariah comes to Johannesburg in search of work, leaving his wife and children in what is now the KwaZulu-Natal province. He finds work in the gold mines, but when the agreed-upon term of employment is over, he wants something that pays more. He negotiates the "pass laws," a notorious system of internal passports devised by the white South African government to enforce segregation, and finds work as the "house boy" for a white couple. But the mistress of the household, played by anti-apartheid activist Myrtle Berman, constantly scolds, berates, and finally fires him, so Zachariah moves from job to job, encountering suspicion and contempt from the white employers. Things become more desperate when his wife, Vinah (Vinah Bendile), and their children join him in Johannesburg. The film vividly explores the street life of the city, and climaxes in a scene set in a shebeen where Black intellectuals discuss their situation and Miriam Makeba, already a celebrity in the country, sings two songs -- a  superb performance that helped launch her international career. But the narrative thread of the film isn't sustained as well as the documentary scenes and after an act of brutality that isn't set up properly, the film ends on a harsh but inconclusive note.   

On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin, 1956)

Ray Salyer and Gorman Hendricks in On the Bowery

Cast: Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews, George L. Bolton. Screenplay: Richard Bagley, Lionel Rogosin, Mark Sufrin. Cinematography: Richard Bagley. Film editing: Carl Lerner. Music: Charles Mills. 

Although it was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary, the fictionalized elements of On the Bowery are patent. Lionel Rogosin created this classic docufiction to provide an entry into the blighted lives of the street people of New York City. The men (and a few women) we see in the film are the ones who almost don't need film to be visible: They were on display for passersby every day. What they needed was understanding, and Rogosin's film at least provides a start to that by dramatizing several days in their lives -- the parts we don't see after we've left them on the street. The "actors" for the most part aren't acting: Rogosin met them on the street and crafted situations for them and let them improvise. The central figure is Ray Salyer, a man whose damaged handsomeness makes him stand out from the paunchy and grizzled men among whom he exists. Several of the other men we meet in the film would be dead in a few years, and after attempts to get his life together, Salyer would eventually die on the streets too. Bosley Crowther, the influential New York Times film critic, dismissively called On the Bowery "sordid." Fortunately, less complacent viewers have preserved it as an enduring look at a problem that refuses to go away.