Unseen cinema. 5, Picturing a metropolis. "Seeing the world". Part one, A visit to New York, N.Y. / Cineric, Inc. presents ; by Rudy Burckhardt.

[United States] : Filmmakers Showcase, 1937.

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PICTURING A METROPOLIS is part of the film retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema. The film opens as a sightseeing portrait of New York, with lively narration taking the viewer aboard the New York elevated and subway trains. Then the view from the windows becomes slightly abstracted, the voice of the commentator becomes uncertain, and tension arises through curious acted scenes of conflict. --R. BRUCE ELDER. Burckhardt rolled together a lighthearted comedy and a NYC travelogue into one short film. At the time his partner, poet Edwin Denby was working with Orson Welles on the play "Horse Eats Hat", and after hours Joseph Cotton and Virginia Nicholson, Welles' wife, moonlighted for Burckhardt. Originally the recorded narration was spoken live at screenings, and the new narration read here by Donnie Brooke Alderson. The film boasts the earliest appearance on film of actor Joseph Cotton. --BRUCE POSNER Burckhardt was best known as a photographer and filmmaker whose primary subject was the New York cityscape: its people, architecture, fleeting details, and ceaseless vitality. He approached films as if they were as easily and intuitively made as photographs, with a distinctive lightness of touch and a grasp of the medium's different possibilities. --ROBERTA SMITH 16mm 1.37:1 black and white silent sound 10:20 minutes.

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November 02, 2020