The late twenties/early thirties saw the birth of the documentary feature and was in many ways the golden age of the documentary film. One of the most important genres to emerge was what came to be called "the city symphony". Among the works of genius that might be so categorised were shorts like Manhatta (Strand and Sheeler, 1921), Rien que Les heures (Cavalcanti, 1926), Les Halles (Galitzine and Kaufman, 1927), Der Brug and Regen (Ivens, 1928-29), Skyscraper Symphony (Florey, 1929), Everyday (Richter, 1929), Images d'Ostende (Storck, 1929), A propos de Nice (Vigo, 1930), A Bronx Morning (Layda, 1931), Douro, fain fluvial (Oliveira, 1931), Il ventre della città (Di Cocco, 1933) and The City (Steiner and Van Dyck, 1939) and the two great features - Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Ruttmann, 1927) and Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929).
However, although several of these films certainly included scenes of working life and may even have contrasted the lives of rich and poor or shown the monotony of the quotidian, the general tone was positive, even celebratory, sometimes elegiac. They are a picture by and large of modernity and a celebration of progress, with the camera, almost whether the film-maker would or no, tending to extol the constructions, the lights, the machinery and the multiple facets or urban consumerism that were transforming the cities.
Before Misère au Borinage (Ivens and Storck, 1934), politically committed documentary rather than city symphony, there are only incidental images of the downside or modernity, urbanism and progress. So hats off to Georges Lacombe for a superb short that concentrates on an entirely different aspect of city life and focuses on the folk forgotten by modernity and progress, living on the rejected flotsam and jetsam of consumerism.
