William Friedkin’s third feature has an improvisational, put-together-at-the-last-minute feeling that is appropriate for its subject matter, which deals with the evolution of staged comedy shows in 1920s New York City. Based on historical fact, the movie revolves around the biggest burlesque theater, run by Billy Minsky, as it struggles to stay open despite crusading moralizers (including Minsky’s own father!) who are determined to see its doors closed. Yet we sense that the crusaders will not be victorious in the long run; the opening narration tells us Minsky’s is where the striptease was invented. It was on that stage that burlesque was forever altered, its hallmarks shifting from a type of broad comedy that pokes fun at serious subjects through caricature, parody and extravagance to performances marked by overt sexual content. One of the more interesting facets of early American burlesque is how much knowledge was assumed on the audience’s part regarding the subjects being mocked. Thus, the notion that people who went to these shows were simply lower-class, illiterate simpletons does not hold up on closer inspection. Like the audience, there was more to the shows than meets the eye.

The development of burlesque from its European tradition to nudity as the central component in America is the heart of this movie, but surrounding it are a handful of interesting, sad-sack characters using their work onstage to make up for something lacking in their offstage lives. The story forms around a comedic duo (Jason Robards and Norman Wisdom) whose off-stage personalities fit as well together as their on-stage ones. Robards, far more smooth-talking and self-confident, is able to make the first move on the naive, beautiful young dancer Rachel Schpitendavel (Britt Ekland), who appears at Minsky’s one afternoon, by playing to her desire to break free from her strict Amish family and become an independent, successful performer. Wisdom, by contrast, plays to her love of the theater and tries to show her the true, comedic nature of burlesque. In a way, both men try to help her, albeit for selfish reasons. Still, she has a quality to her that no man understands, least of all her stringent father, who has come to New York to redeem her from this life of sin she seems willing to commit.

One of the most entertaining elements of The Night They Raided Minsky’s is its sense of time and place, Lower East Side Manhattan in 1925, which contributes to the depictions of the actors at Minsky’s, who feed off the audience as much as they feed the shows. There is a feeling of desperation to these performances, particularly in the way they are edited. Indeed, the editing is the most striking part of the movie, cross-cutting between actual footage of the Lower East Side in the 1920s and color footage shot for the movie, often depicting the same subject matter. The result is a striking compare/contrast that furnishes the immortality of this setting, largely populated by Jewish families and bustling with a vigor and spirit of performance that makes stage comedy a natural consequence for many inhabitants. This element is emphasized strongest in the scenes set at an unnamed Jewish deli, across the street from the theater, where many of the actors, stagehands and producers hang out, eat and drink between and after shows. It is here that the true nature of this time, place and story is fully brought to life. Whether it is the producers and investors scheming to keep the doors open, the actors blowing off steam or the waiter interrupting and making a scene at every table, there is a lovable poke at Jewish outlandishness, reflecting how easy it is for some of these individuals to be successful on stage: they’re already performing everywhere else.

In the climactic sequence of The Night They Raided Minsky’s, where the young Rachel bravely puts herself on stage to dance in a manner most unlike how she was raised, and is goaded by the audience, there is a feeling of elation tinged with sadness. The elation comes from seeing this liberated woman dance as she pleases, but the sadness, personified in Robards’ eyes, is in freeing herself at the cost of her integrity. It also signifies an end of one era, old-style burlesque, and the beginning of another, the striptease. In the final scene, we see the old, former actor Spats (Bert Lahr, a former burlesque actor before moving to Hollywood) cross the stage and attempt to set a seltzer bottle upright. Clearly this is emblematic of trying to set right what has been overturned, but we know this is impossible. Spats, always watching from the side of the stage, never allowed to perform where he once starred, represents this bygone era, undone by a naive young Amish girl simply trying to realize a personal dream. Like Spats before her, Rachel becomes a by-product of the machine that is the theater. Never pausing, always pressing forward, the audience demands something they’ve never seen before. This time it is innocent nudity; what comes next and when does it end?

As mentioned earlier, the editing of The Night They Raided Minsky‘s showcases the similarities and differences between the present (1968) and the past (1925). Yet, unlike his later projects, Friedkin was largely absent from the editing room, having gone to England to shoot The Birthday Party. This left the supervision largely in the hands of editor Ralph Rosenblum, who believed the job would be fairly simple until he realized that there was little to no vision on how to achieve what the script described. In the end, Rosenblum utilized the black-and-white stock footage of 1920s Lower East Side as a way to “comment on and enhance” what was shot for the movie. He later commented that there was a kind of Richard Lester quality to what was ultimately put together, drawing on Lester’s style in movies like Help! and The Knack. Despite attaching a contemporary editing style to an otherwise ‘old-fashioned’ story, the movie comes together in a disjointed, fun-loving kind of way.

For his part, Friedkin acknowledged years later that the movie was “way over my head. I didn’t have a clue what to do.” Still, a recent article written for Forward, a Jewish publication, describes The Night They Raided Minsky’s as “Friedkin’s most Jewish movie,” particularly in its handling of food in the deli scenes. Whatever the intentions, the movie does show Friedkin’s ability to adapt to a variety of different kinds of genres, be they a musical, stage adaptation or historical comedy (with music!). Friedkin later said his first three pictures “have very little value…I think the kindest word you could use in describing them is ‘crude.’” Regardless of these movies’ values, they were nevertheless an invaluable building block for Friedkin’s development.