City, The
City, The is a short film from 1939 released on 16mm. It is held in the Prelinger Archives collection.
Contents. A plea for community planning, which contrasts the awesome conditions of human living in a modern industrial city with (1) the serenity of life in an eighteenth-century New England village and (2) the architect's and engineer's concept of the model community, as typified by the federal government's resettlement experiment at Greenbelt, Maryland, and the privately developed one at Radburn, New Jersey.
Life in the New England village of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century is described. There are slowly unfolding views of an old water wheel, a covered bridge, the swimming hole, and other scenes characteristic of the period. A town meeting is shown in session; the speaker at the meeting talks of the village way of life and his remarks are illustrated by views of people at simple handicraft tasks. The transition to the modern industrial city is made by the merging of a shower of sparks from the smithy's forge with those from a Bessemer converter in a modern steel mill. The scenes change to smokestacks against the sky, to molten slag flowing down the dump, and to the miserable company houses. Children walk along the crude wooden sidewalks. One child narrowly escapes death when he and his companions run across a railroad track in front of a train. A woman pumps water a few feet from an outdoor toilet, hangs the washing in a smoke-filled atmosphere, and shovels coal into an outmoded kitchen stove. Such symbols of industrialism as smokestacks, locomotives, and steam shovels are shown as the musical tempo is accelerated and the commentator echoes the phrases "better and better" and "faster and faster." Now attention is turned to the great metropolis, New York. Dwarfed by the skyscrapers, human beings mill through city streets, push out of subways, and squeeze through seemingly endless lines of mid-town traffic. The music works up to a screech symbolic of the nervous tension and speed of life in the metropolitan business center. An office scene of long rows of girls at typewriters is accompanied by a chorus of dictation mechanical and impersonal. The environment in which children live and play is depicted by scenes of a street accident in which an ambulance takes away the victim, of boys who play stick ball in the street, steal rides on trucks and streetcars, rummage through garbage, and dive from a dock for a swim in a dirty river. At the lunch hour people gulp coffee and eat sandwiches in an atmosphere of confusion sandwiches are slapped together, toast bounces out of a toaster, and pancakes pour automatically on an automatic griddle. Workers return to work through streams of traffic. Long lines of people wait at clinics and dispensaries. At the end of the day the crowds begin to pour out of buildings and start home. Crowds of pedestrians, a traffic jam, traffic officers, traffic signals, together with a shrill, wrenching musical score, create a sense of confusion and tension. Then comes Sunday. The business district is deserted, but on the highway cars move in a constant stream. Caught in a traffic jam a driver sits and waits. A family picnics on the roadside as the traffic whizzes by. Cars crash bumpers; a car plunges over a cliff.
The next section of the film is the architect's and engineer's solution to the problem. Scenes of Boulder Dam, power lines, research laboratories, airplanes, and streamlined trains convey the impression that science in modern society can provide a way to better living. Modern highway designs are shown as new developments in beauty and safety. There is an aerial view of a well-patterned community which the commentator calls "a green city" built away from crowded metropolitan conditions. In a modern factory employees are shown in a leisurely conducted dining room. Employees walk happily to homes of modern design with adequate lawn space. Recreation facilities are symbolized with views of horseback riding, bicycling, softball games, swimming, gardening, and fishing. An electric stove and an electric washing machine show that much of the drudgery has been taken from housework. The community newspaper comes off the press and is delivered to the front porch. Shopping is done at a modern market; the vegetables, the commentator explains, come from nearby farms. Families leave "the green city" by automobiles for recreation at the golf course, the swimming pool, the skating rink, and the ocean beach. A concert platform, a medical clinic, and a school are shown as parts of the community facilities. Views contrasting "model" housing with crowded tenements, and children playing in large playgrounds with children playing in the dirty street are accompanied by the statement, "Take your choice." Scenes of "cities in which people are always getting ready to live . . ." are followed by scenes of the life that the picture suggests is possible in "a green city."| City, The | |
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| Produced by | American Documentary Films, Inc. |
Production companies | American Documentary Films, Inc. |
| Distributed by | American Documentary Films, Inc. |
Release date | 1939 |
| Language | English |
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