When the history of 20th century comedy is written, someone will tell the story of the geniuses who emerged from the working class neighborhoods of New York's outer boroughs: Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Neil Simon will make the list, along with Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen. There are others, of course. Together they make up one of the most remarkable flowerings of comic talent in American history. Woody's talent sprang from him fully formed. His basic gift is in full evidence in this early picture. It is debatable that he has improved with age, although it is worth noting that his exposure, like Harold Pinter's, to elegant, bourgeois life permanently altered the objects of his comic study. Mia Farrow introduced him to the good life, to aristocratic penthouse life, and there was no turning back. Still, his genius can be seen in his ability to adjust and move on. Later Woody is every bit as good as his early work, but not necessarily better, unless you happen to like posh talk and that very special boredom of the urban bourgeoisie. This early picture, though lacking in elegant settings and posh-talk, is vintage; here we having that wonderful skewering of pieties that one remembers from the Marx Brothers. Woody is wonderful at exposing pretensions, great and small. Here he plays a small-time hoodlum, a kind of Sylvester Stallone, played as a clumsy oaf, a loser, and nebbishy klutz, with eyes for the gals. Groucho, where are you? The film is a work of genius. It is a jewel.