Street Smart. 1987. USA. Directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Directed by Jerry Schatzberg. Screenplay by David Freeman. With Christopher Reeve, Kathy Baker, Mimi Rogers, Jay Patterson, Andre Gregory, Morgan Freeman. 35mm, courtesy Harvard Film Archive. 97 min.
Released in the morally hazy twilight of the Reagan presidency, Jerry Schatzberg’s neo-noir emerged from a moment of crisis in American journalism, when a Pulitzer-winning Washington Post story about an eight-year-old heroin addict was revealed to have been fabricated. The screenplay by David Freeman—Alfred Hitchcock’s collaborator on his final, unrealized project The Short Night—follows a fledgling magazine journalist (Christopher Reeve) whose invented profile of a Times Square pimp makes him a star—before, like Bruno in Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, his invention materializes in flesh and blood, with potentially lethal consequences.
Morgan Freeman’s Oscar-nominated performance as the charismatic, ruthless Fast Black transformed his career, promoting him from The Electric Company regular to one of the hardest-working character actors of his time. Schatzberg and cinematographer Adam Holender’s decision to shoot primarily in Montreal, transforming it into a noirish simulacrum of New York, inadvertently underscores the film’s themes of authenticity and artifice, while reflecting the economic realities of late-1980s film production. Kathy Baker delivers a poignant performance as a sex worker navigating the harsh realities imposed by Fast Black and the naive fantasies of the reporter, while supporting work by Mimi Rogers, Jay Patterson, and Andre Gregory adds the customary Schatzberg depth.