The Public Eye

New York, 1942. The press photographer Bernzy always works nights. With his pockets full of film and flashes, he takes his camera and goes out into the streets alone, always alone, to look for game. Fresh murders. Car accidents. Houses on fire. With his bulky flashlight camera, he freezes everything that can be sold to the morning papers into black and white pictures. Pictures of murders are the most wanted. Bernzy, who is always the first on the spot, gets ''ten bucks a corpse''.
Comment:
The Paparazzi photographer Bernzy has a special aim with his pictures. Since he is unable to have relations with other people, his pictures are his way of expressing him· self. He dreams of a photo book where he can show his city the way he experiences it. But the publishers that Bernzy visits tell him that his documentary, often very brutal, night images do not belong in a photo book with artistic ambitions.
The Public Eye turns into a rather traditIonal thriller in a New York setting, where Bernzy (a character that could have been taken from a novel by Damon Runyon) involuntarily gets involved in a maffia showdown. But the most interesting part of the film is
Bernzy's job and his photographs.
Bernzy is portrayed by Joe Pesci who in this film does his most quiet part so far. We are far away from the cascades of words in Raging Bull and The Brotherhood, although this character totally masters the language of the streets as well.
The director is Howard Franklin, who previously directed Quick Change together with Bill Murray. Franklin has also written the script for among others Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me. Director of photography is Peter Suschitzky (Dead Ringers, The Naked Lunch), while Bernzy's photographs are taken from the old newspaper archives of the New York press. Some new pictures were needed as a complement and caused the film team to analyse just what it is that makes these old big city pictures so fascinating.
Howard Franklin: ''The tabloid photographers of the 30's and 40's didn't have time to set lights like studio photographers. They had to use big flashbulbs to get enough concentrated light. As a result, the subject of the picture was bathed in bright light, but the background fell into darkness. The subjects feel isolated. Big cities like New York and Chicago seem like lonely places in those pictures''.
Jan Gradvall

Medverkande
Joe Pesci, Barbara Hershey: Producent
Sue Baden-Powell: Manus
Howard Franklin: Foto
Peter Suschirzky: Musik
Mark Isham: Talat språk
English