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Poster for The Big City (1956)

The Big City (1956)

1956 · Short film · 23 min · dir. Charles Guggenheim

For the citizen whose tax dollar runs The Big City. This is the story of what he buys.

  • Documentary
Watch now On the Internet Archive

Synopsis

St. Louis’s annual report to taxpayers. The Big City visually illustrated how tax dollars were put to good use and was considered a “graphic, fluent and compact documentary” by Howard Thompson. Note: Sixteen prints were made for exhibition by schools, civic organizations, and church groups. For more on the filmmaker, see Shelby Coffey III, “Politics as an Art Form: Guggenheim and the Movies,” Washington Post, Feb. 9, 1969, 262.

Synopsis from TMDb

Details

Director
Charles Guggenheim
Writer
Charles Guggenheim
Studio
Charles Guggenheim & Associates
Running time
23 minutes

Cast & crew

Reviews on the Internet Archive

★★★★★ · Worth Watching · Dodsworth the Cat · 2022-11-19

Well-shot, staged documentary about a day in the life of St. Louis. The score has also been well assembled from a Capitol record of the local symphony. In something that sounds like a conflict in terms, tons of chemicals are needed to make pure water. The uncredited narrator sounds like Ralph Bellamy.

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