The City (1939)
1939 · Short film · 31 min · dir. Willard Van Dyke
- Documentary
Synopsis
A prescient documentary about city planning, which presents idyllic suburbs and nuclear families as a solution to the chaos, poverty and social decay of industrialized inner cities.
Synopsis from OMDb
Details
- Director
- Willard Van Dyke
- Writer
- Pare Lorentz
- Composer
- Aaron Copland
- Cinematography
- Ralph Steiner
- Studio
- American Documentary Films Inc., American Institute of Planners, Civic Films Inc.
- Released
- 1939-05-26
- Running time
- 31 minutes
Cast & crew
Willard Van Dyke Director
Morris Carnovsky
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★ · The New World of Yesterday · Paul Dewdrop · 2020-06-07
This is an interesting documentary that spoke for a balance between the 'brutal mills' of the then modern industrial metropolis and a more balanced planned community. This documentary was made just previous to the post war invasion of the European glass box into the United States (think Mies van der Rohe's arrival in Chicago). Its thesis lends itself more to the American ideal in the vein of mixed-use living (and zoning) than in the emergence of the massive welfare blocks of the 1950s and 60s. It is refreshing that there is very little dialogue, it is more of a visual experience.
