In the Suburbs (1957)
1957 · Ephemeral film · 19 min · dir. Virginia Bell
- Documentary
Synopsis
Film promoting advertising in Redbook as the best way to reach young suburban consumers, a growing demographic of the late 1950s. It makes the point through a rich collection of actuality footage showing families and children engaged in leisure activities at home and at the shopping center. Produced in Kodachrome.
Synopsis from TMDb
Details
- Director
- Virginia Bell
- Cinematography
- Bert Spielvogel
- Studio
- On Film
- Released
- 1957-01-01
- Running time
- 19 minutes
Cast & crew
Virginia Bell Director- Roy M. Cohn
Joseph McCarthy
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★★ · Just Amazing. · Spuzz · 2017-07-24
Highly gorgeous short which is, in most part, a shill for Redbook Magazine. But in it's layers is a fascinating study, just about the best I've seen, about 1950's suburbia and consumerism, with the focus on the shopping malls. The film starts off by some overwhelmingly hypnotic shots of people gaily playing about in their lovely suburban home in color, and then we have shots of the dirty city life they left behind (In black and white). These 'Young Adults' (20?-25?) move here to get out of city life, have kids, and of course, to shop shop shop. This is a very Stepford wives creepfest going…
★★★★ · No Thanks · Dodsworth the Cat · 2024-09-27
20-somethings exchange a noisy, cramped apartment in the city for a noisy, cramped (with kids and neighbours) home in the suburbs, up to their eyebrows in debt from mortgages and buying this and that for their houses and rugrats. And a commute. All to maintain the social structure of the '50s. But, thank the stars, Redbook is here to help you solve every problem and worry. Redbook helped the producers of this film, as there are plenty of shots of pages of the magazine to fill footage, and more blatant plugs near the end. Deliberate or not, this is about as unappealing look at suburban life as…
