Castro Street (1966) User Reviews

City sights and sounds collected in a landscape format.

[Jack-75 · 7/10 · 6 October 1998]

Dizzifyingly in movement, Baillie's Castro Street is a look at the cluttered landscape of a city block of the same name. The only dialogue comes from the sounds of the city. The only characters are traffic, a train station, and a handful of signs. This unique cast leads the viewer along the street. Overlapping pictures, blurred and confusing, convey the business of city life. Following the train down the track, Baillie briefly juxtaposes the urban jungle with a scenic country field--where color is clear and no overlapping of images clutters the view. Compositionally, interesting edits and cuts are used to present a mountain of commonplace objects to the audience: there is always something new to look at. This ten-minute piece features a unique perspective on the changing sights of a city landscape.

Boredom Street

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 12 March 2016]

"Castro Street" is an American documentary in color from 50 years ago and the man who made this is Bruce Baillie. It runs for slightly under 10 minutes and I have to say I am glad it was this short because there was nothing interesting I saw or heard here. Maybe you need to have a connection to Castro Street in order to like this one, but that would actually only apply to 0,0001% of mankind. Baillie was extremely prolific in the 1960s and this is one of his more known works. However, watching this one I must say I have zero interest in checking out other stuff from him. What a disappointment and I really cannot understand why this would be included in the National Film registry. like I said, only good thing about it is how quickly it is over. Absolutely not recommended.