Manhatta1921

Photographic artists Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler are the cinematographers of this visualization of Walt Whitman's poetry about New York City. Like many of the avant-garde works of the time, the film prefers to look at cities as abstractions of line, form and movement. A vignette of the Staten Island ferry docking in Manhattan looks like a whale that swallowed and disgorged a million undifferentiated Jonahs. Abandoning human intercourse for the interaction of machine with machine, Strand and Sheeler show the mammoth ocean liner RMS Aquitania being pushed to dock by a line of tugboats. Rejecting the boosterism that often accompanies progress, the film score is industrial, mournful and urban, with a slightly jazzy sound to evoke the city that is its subject. Clearly an influence on Robert Flaherty’s THE TWENTY-FOUR DOLLAR ISLAND, made in 1927, this is essential viewing for those interested in the avant-garde movement of the 1920s. - Marilyn Ferdinand