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Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.
I visual ode to the city that never sleeps. In Manhatta, the vertical landscapes framed by the countless buildings, the machinery and the electrical wires create a poetic and thoughtful look at one of the biggest creations of mankind. The industrialisation is captured by the way the people look lost in this world of concrete and metal they have created themselves. Humans and machines are tightly intertwined, but the immensity of the city swallows its habitants, devouring every touch of individuality. The emphasis on the textures of water, steam, rust and dirt reminds us of the humanity peaking through this sea of modernity. This "city film" is a visual poem dedicated to the colossal and mesmerizing New York, while commenting on the questionnable impact modernity has had on humanity.
A city-poem (the poem by Walt Whitman, the city by, uh, America) told in mostly static shots, this film gives a fascinating glimpse into New York nearly 100 years ago. Apparently, it instilled a fervent love even then in artists and experimenters, in poets and masses of people (swarming off a ferry to open the film) even then, being the front door of an America not yet ready to admit to its own horrors. This romantic vision is capped off by, perhaps, the ultimate romantic visual: a sunrise over the city from high above it. Between these moments, we see it from many angles, including laid bare in construction phases (growing pains). It almost tells a story, almost shows a complete picture of this stolen jewel.
"City of the world, for all races are here. City of tall facades of marble and iron. Proud an passionate city."
Manhatta is a 1921 documentary silent-short about Manhattan, New York City. Directed by Paul Strand, it's basically a montage of various places in Manhattan displayed with a musical score in the background. It's a time when steam and smoke billowed from the tops of buildings and brave man built skyscrapers, standing on beams with little to no equipment. Absolute insanity for someone who is afraid of heights like myself. We get awesome views of buildings, many of which still exist, as well as New York Harbor and the steamships of the time. Cool stuff.…
Not sure it needed both the booming soundtrack and the Whitman poetry, but looking at that massive skyline, it's easy to understand why Strand and Sheeler would try to squeeze as much as possible into their film, a time capsule of New York City almost a hundred years ago that feels weirdly remote in the 21st century--like a vision of the city that was real at one point, but hasn't been, maybe for a while now.
Koyaanisqatsi but just for Manhattan and four whole decades earlier. The first of the subgenre cycle of "city symphony" films, Manhatta offers a portrait of life in New York City dominated by architecture and industry. Skyscrapers and other mechanical infrastructure overwhelm the frame, while people are rarely seen at all. Humanity's first appearance characterizes its overall (lack of) presence: a mass of bodies is ushered like cattle onto the island via the ferry. This city is not ruled by people, it is ruled by buildings and boats and machines and mobs. Humanity is merely the livestock that feeds the engine of capitalist industry.
I love not just the way we were, but how the Then preludes the Now. Great swarms of people. The novelty of witnessing a full-fledged motion picture film camera clearly impresses and disturbs the NYC denizens Then — I’d like to think we don’t admonish the ubiquity of the lens with the same mixture of disdain and awe Now, but I sure as hell would if I saw one of those dual-reel monstrosities. There’s a reason the ancestor of the movie camera was called a chronophotographic gun.
Actually, I got Koyaanisqatsi flashbacks, and not just from the bird’s eye view, humans-as-ants POV, or the cityscape itself, but rather from the totality of this particular urban sprawl. Land, air, and sea,…
Two photographers, Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, set out to make a document of Manhattan in 1920, set to the poem "Manhatta" by Walt Whitman. The result is one of the earliest surviving works of American avant-garde cinema. And while it doesn't really experiment or push the boundaries of the medium beyond early silent documentaries the way later films would, it captures the city in an indelible way. It's fascinating from a historical perspective watching the Cunard liner, Aquitania, docking in New York harbor, or seeing life in 1920 carried out in a way that's so different yet so similar to how it is today. Early silent films were made up of scenes of every day life, and while MANHATTA doesn't really change much in that regard, it's a poetic ode to a city its filmmakers clearly loved.
The Whitman-y stuff in the intertitles forces a "glories of progress" interpretation onto the images, but an alternative reading is lying right beneath the surface, don't have to strain at all to tease it out.
I love these kinds of early documentaries that are just shots of a city, and this one is particularly beautiful. It's so amazing to see how things to be so vividly and I cherish that these films were able to survive until today.
A beautiful study of urban geometry. Astonishing wide shots, crowd shots, etcetera. I mean... It's a "your mileage may vary" type of thing, but for me, a sucker for urban beauty and industrial systems... Well, I liked it.
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