The City

Curious to find THE CITY evoking such antagonism eighty years after it's production.

After half a Century I had another look at it and was impressed to see the effect it had had on subsequent work including my own. The elements are impressive - the Copland score which I immediately remembered, Morris (THIEVES HIGHWAY, VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE) Carnovsky's reading of Lewis Mumford's commentary and Theodore Lawrence's editing which is a link between the Soviet montage work and Hollywood. The film was cannibalised into a Passing Parade and the Warner HUMORESQUE.

The message about substandard housing ("places where a man sent up for crime can have a better place than we can get for our children") still resonates though their solution sits uneasily with our knowledge of over population and urban planning now but it set up a dialogue with fiction films like SUNRISE, STREET OF WOMEN or LA TERRE QUI MEURT. It's not too far away from the ideal industrial community shown in MAJOR BARBARA.

This one stood out when I started watching non theatrical movies and I still enjoy watching it.