I first saw this film in 2000 as a part of an exhibit about the World's Fair at the University of Minnesota's Weisman Art Museum. It sparked a new interest in the World's Fairs of New York, an interest which continues to this day.
The filmmakers could not have picked a better narrator than Jason Robards. His calm and direct voice conveys a nostalgic, but sometimes almost critical, mystery about the Fair's significance.
In the director's opinion, the World's Fair marked a change in America's way of viewing the world. It was as though we were literally changing from black-and-white and moving into color. The vision of the future as presented through the fair was beautiful, but complicated and sometimes contrived and naively idealistic, especially given the political setting of 1939 and 1940, as war was dawning in Europe. A mention is made of America's concerns about having such a large display by Communist Soviet Union. It also mentions the irony of one country (Lithuania, I believe?), which had a display at the beginning of the Fair, but during the Fair, the country was annexed by the Soviets, and by the end of the Fair, they no longer had a country to which they could return. America itself would grow and enter a much more complicated future.
Whether you agree with the director, if you are interested in this time period or the World's Fairs, you'll probably enjoy footage of the Fair, including excerpts of speeches by Mayor Joe LaGuardia and the many exhibits and structures of the Fair, of course.
Toward the end of the film, I was so moved during one point in the poetic narration that I cried. I strongly encourage people to see this film and I hope that one day it will be released on DVD, or whatever the current media format of the time will be.
The filmmakers could not have picked a better narrator than Jason Robards. His calm and direct voice conveys a nostalgic, but sometimes almost critical, mystery about the Fair's significance.
In the director's opinion, the World's Fair marked a change in America's way of viewing the world. It was as though we were literally changing from black-and-white and moving into color. The vision of the future as presented through the fair was beautiful, but complicated and sometimes contrived and naively idealistic, especially given the political setting of 1939 and 1940, as war was dawning in Europe. A mention is made of America's concerns about having such a large display by Communist Soviet Union. It also mentions the irony of one country (Lithuania, I believe?), which had a display at the beginning of the Fair, but during the Fair, the country was annexed by the Soviets, and by the end of the Fair, they no longer had a country to which they could return. America itself would grow and enter a much more complicated future.
Whether you agree with the director, if you are interested in this time period or the World's Fairs, you'll probably enjoy footage of the Fair, including excerpts of speeches by Mayor Joe LaGuardia and the many exhibits and structures of the Fair, of course.
Toward the end of the film, I was so moved during one point in the poetic narration that I cried. I strongly encourage people to see this film and I hope that one day it will be released on DVD, or whatever the current media format of the time will be.