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Retrospective Film Review
The Panic in Needle Park (1971) • 55 Years Later — harrowing drug addiction tragedy that kickstarted Pacino’s career
Follows the lives of heroin addicts who frequent “Needle Park” in New York City.
Ned Rorem, a prolific contemporary classical composer, was hired to score Jerry Schatzberg’s The Panic in Needle Park. It would have been the Pulitzer-winning composer’s only work for film, but it was not to be; it was later decided that the film would work best with no music whatsoever. Rorem’s score may have been a masterpiece, but the cold,harrowing silence in the film is a formidable match as we watch two helpless lovers tumble down a web of addiction and betrayal. The sly hustler Bobby (Al Pacino) is already ensnared by addiction, and it isn’t long before his new beau, Helen (Kitty Wynn), winds down the same path.
Helen isn’t a noble or awful person, nor does she have a quintessentially perfect life at the film’s outset. This makes it easier to imagine her as someone you could pass on the street, or who might even be in your own family — a necessity…
