Hacker Cinema
Manhatta
1921 · Film · documentary · 11 min
Directed by Charles Sheeler, Paul Strand
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.
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They're not quite documentaries in the standard sense, but I like the 1920s/30s "city symphonies", which try to capture some of the mood and rhythm of cities. Three are: Manhatta (USA, 1921), Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (Germany, 1927), and Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, 1929). They're plotless and a bit avant-garde, though, so may be boring if you're not into that sort of thing. Man with a Movie Camera is the most avant-garde, and is as much about the reflexive idea of filming a city as about the city itself; it also invented a bunch of now-standard cinematic techniques.