Documentary Finds Free Spirit of Allen Ginsberg

Many of the characters and settings that populate “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg” were already familiar when producer-director Jerry Aronson made his 1993 film, which airs tonight in abbreviated form on PBS’ “American Masters” series.

But Aronson makes the most of finite resources, supplementing images and opinions seen in earlier documentaries on Ginsberg cronies Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs with rare footage and new perspective. (A comment from Amiri Baraka, the former LeRoi Jones, about Ginsberg’s landmark poem “Howl” marks one of the few times you’ll see his work linked to the black experience.)

It adds up to a nicely paced biography of the influential poet and cultural icon, who died in April at age 70. It reaches satisfying depth in each of its chosen topics, including the Ginsberg family history, a portrait of the poet as a young man, his struggle to embrace and express his homosexuality, his political activism and his pivotal role in the Beat revolution and the ‘60s counterculture.

Aronson’s is an admiring view of Ginsberg, and the extensive reminiscences and readings by the subject make it an understandable one. Ginsberg emerges as a delightful free spirit, a complex blend of integrity, humility and self-promotion, with a poetic gift that could even charm a predatory William F. Buckley Jr. on “Firing Line.”

While tonight’s “Life and Times” presents generous samples of that poetry, the film fails to give it much serious analysis. Norman Mailer calls him a genius, but we don’t hear that opinion supported with authoritative commentary that would place Ginsberg in the context of the century’s poetry.

Maybe that’s something that was lost in reducing the 82-minute film to an hour. That decision is hard to understand. If PBS wanted to eulogize Ginsberg, why not simply screen the full-length film? And if you’re going to alter it, at least go to the trouble of adding a coda to acknowledge his passing and make it all seem a little fresher.

The Ginsberg portrayed here deserves at least that effort from an institution indebted to his intellectual trailblazing.

* “The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg” airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28.