City Symphony: Joris Ivens's Rain

In my dissertation's introductory chapter, I devote some space to discussing the historical backdrop of city symphonies, those glorious early avant-garde works of cinematic documentation and manipulation that forever tied city and cinema together in our imagination. The best-known among them include Manhatta (Strand, 1921), Twenty-Four Dollar Island (Flaherty, 1926), Berlin, Symphony of a City (Ruttmann, 1927), Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) and Berlin - Alexanderplatz (Jutzi, 1931), all of which are mainstays of film studies coursework, variably discussed in classes on European, documentary or avant-garde cinema. The term city symphony, borrowed from the subtitle of Walter Ruttman’s abovementioned film about Berlin, has been “applied to numerous films within which practices of visual kinaesthesia constructed a 'symphony' based on the diurnal cycle of life in the modern metropolis, while simultaneously infusing avant-gardist perspectives with a historically and politically cognizant form of social criticism.” (Keith Beattie, see here.) Visual strategies are developed to capture both the image of the modern-era city, and the rhythm and changing phenomena that define it.

Recently, I watched one of the slighter "symphonies" for the first time, Joris Ivens's Rain (1929). In a brisk twelve minutes, the short film captures the scene in Amsterdam during some inclement weather, producing "a poetic meditation on the transformation of a city by rain." (Internet Archive).

You can download the film from the (truly amazing resource that is the) Internet Archive here. (Downloading is better than streaming, fyi, but the quality is admittedly somewhat wanting in either case.)

Ivens’s film adds a weather-related overlay to several of the usual city symphony tropes: a fascination with the changing spaces of the city, crowds of people, public transit (trolleys being the primary mode of the era), the structures that define the landscape and the unusual ways in which the eye may catch them at play. Oblique or ingenious compositions are employed, silently establishing the key difference between the cinematic view of urban life and that available to the citizen on the street: Rain, like the other city symphonies listed, seeks to rise above, peep at from below, run beside, dissect and even re-mix the visual components of early twentieth-century city scenes to capture their kaleidoscopic vigour and frequent social ironies in startling new ways.


In the image above, Ivens films the raindrops on the surface of the canals as the downpour – which arrives a few minutes into the film, after the city scene is established – grows in intensity. The shot is followed by a sequence of images of pedestrians in a square who are, almost to a soggy one, covered with black umbrellas.


The effect is a visual echo, underscoring the manners in which the urban masses are (well?) equipped to respond to their environment. There is something faintly cosmopolitan, one feels, about the crowd's readiness. City life in 1929 is dynamic but orderly.

In the diss, I make the argument that sound film and the dominance of narrative cinema over the avant-gardist project led to a concentration of urban representations in narrative filmmaking and its familiar genres. While there are always exceptions to be found (particularly in the realm of documentary and, perhaps, increasingly so), the city symphony may be considered a form largely confined to the 1920s (predominantly in Europe) through 1940s and early 50s (more so in the United States and New York in particular). I am hoping to organize a screening programme of some sort to return to these earliest films about the city, to facilitate discussion of the optical and cinematic languages that inform more contemporary city films. How, for instance, might one compare the rain-soaked crowds in Rain with those in the polyglot marketplace of Blade Runner, with their futuristic illuminated umbrellas? What characterizes the city spaces of (a vaguely identified) Shanghai (which actually also comprised images of London, Hong Kong and Dubai) in Code 46 versus those of Man With a Movie Camera or Berlin, Symphony of a City? (My preliminary hunch on this latter question is that the sense of an excessively well-maintained master plan is shared among the films while Code 46 is unique more so for what I elsewhere term “the stamp of corporation” than for the visible advancement of its technology.)

In any event, this is primarily a reminder for any who might be interested in the Internet Archive’s amazing depth as a research treasure trove for mid-afternoon curiosity excursions such as this one. Many of the classic city films mentioned above are available there.

One final aside: Rain is a silent film to which – in the version I watched – a grating soundtrack has been added. I’d recommend watching with the sound off or, if you are amenable to a little re-mixing of one’s own, adding a soundtrack. On a first pass, I went with, in order, DeVotchKa’s “The Winner Is” (from the Little Miss Sunshine soundtrack), a brief interlude in the form of Eels’ “Theme for a Pretty Girl that Makes You Believe God Exists” and Max Richter’s “On the Nature of Daylight.” The effect was somewhat more downtempo than the symphonic/rhythmic emphasis discussed above, but it was gorgeous. My second attempt was even more successful: a perennial favourite, Saint-Saëns’s “Aquarium” from Le Carnaval des Animaux, followed by Carly Commando’s “Everyday” and Mark Mothersbaugh’s “Sparkplug Minuet” (from the Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack). It pretty much edited itself.

Easing Back In...: "cynicism in the face of mile-high towers"

Just to get a ball rolling here again, I wanted to point out some interesting questions raised over at BLDGBLOG in a post from yesterday. Author Geoff Manaugh is prepping for a panel discussion in Chicago next Saturday titled "Offshoring Audacity." The panel will be discussing the use of the developing countries and desert spaces of the East as laborities for the architectural and urban planning experiments of Western designers and builders.

As usual, the BLDGBLOG read is compelling, a quick and provocative sprint that runs from indoor ski slopes to Heidegger in a nanosecond. It sets up the questions to be consideed at the panel: Should we celebrate architectural audacity, especially as it witnesses designs crossing cultural divides and carrying American or European architects to Abu Dhabi? Or, as my borrowed title suggests, adopt a cautious cynicism, if not fear, of titanic endeavours that grow up almost over night? And, what role should regional or national identity play in all of this?

In other words, is it perhaps weird enough that Atlantis was resurrected from myth and built in the Bahamas, without it being rebuilt again pretty much the same, in Dubai?

These are all questions that make appearances in Chapter 5 of my diss, so more on this topic in coming months. For the time being, I'll just end with posting a rendering of one of the forthcoming Dubai projects that BLDGBLOG references: Park Gate, a 4.7 million square foot complex of "six mid-rise towers linked together by soaring vaulted canopies."


As World Architecture News reports, it will be part of a 12-year, $15 billion building project commissioned for Dubai from US firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill. Funny thing is, it's the first incredibly futuristic, aggressively audacious building project I've read of in a couple of years that hasn't left me with a queasy, paranoid feeling. It looks like an ambitious future site I would actually like to visit, when compared even with the other projects in the plan, 1 Dubai or 1 Park Avenue, both of which leave me with a (perhaps entirely irrational) feeling of dread and fatalism. There's probably some kind of easy urban-emotion version of an ink-splotch test I should take to get at the root or my architectural anxieties... I should look into that before I get back to work on Ch. 5.

The Dungeon Masters

Another Daily article, this time a roundtable with the awesome filmmakers behind the documentary The Dungeon Masters. This crew rocked.

Witch Hunt Article

My next major piece in the Daily (there've been some shorted q+as here and there) is on the screening of Witch Hunt in Toronto. Click!

Just a wee link...

... to a Daily article of mine on two new city films: Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy and Terence Davies's Of Time and the City.

View it here.

TIFF kicks off

If I haven't been blogging much in the last month, I DEFINITELY will not be doing much for the next ten days. I will, however, refer you to the online extracts for the Toronto International Film Festival Daily, for which I am Editor-in-Chief this year.

Happy reading!

Alt Cinema(s)

So, sometimes it takes a kick in the head to get me back into things, and the kicks have been flying thick and fast, at least cinema-wise, lately.

I have found myself knee-deep in the annual floodwaters of preparations for TIFF, working the fifteen-hour days, trying to convince a crew of highly motivated new staff that they need to stay even more motivated throughout the grueling next few weeks, and trying to pry programme notes from the programming team who are as busy as usual corralling new films from around the world to bring to Festival audiences.

I last posted in May; I blinked, and it was almost August. Sad, but also exciting as the summer has delivered some amazing films. The TIFF selection will have to be something I - hopefully - talk about in subsequent posts (though I certainly draw everyone's attention to Us Chickens, a stunning film that is playing in the Festival's Short Cuts Canada programme...). Instead, I wanted to write about two recent, both rather pulpy movie-going experiences: the drive-in and the Trash Palace.

First, the Drive-In.

What does it say about how incomplete my graduate education has been that, while already an ABD in film studies, I had never been to a real drive-in movie until two weekends ago? (I use the qualifier "real" here to keep myself honest, as I once sat in my car in an alley behind a business supply store in Hollywood, trying to stay awake through the projection of an LA indie filmmaker's "pirate" drive-in. I remember some incredibly befuddled narrative, maybe something involving an island, and a desperate, unrequited craving for licorice.) So, after discovering that The North York Drive In Theatre was close enough to make a night of it, plans were hatched.

I suppose I imagined that the only things that still played on drive-in screens would be retro films... something animated by Ray Harryhausen maybe... So seeing The Dark Knight (the first half of a double bill with Get Smart) the Saturday after it opened and set box-office records across North America was not what I had expected. Afterall, the people who are really geeking out about it are freaking about seeing it in Imax. It is a visually lavish, Michael Mann-esque city film that revels in reflections, steel, glass and no small amount of flame, so waiting til the last bits of twilight are faded and trying to take it all in through a dashboard, with the occasional flitting-bys of nighttime bugs and the incessant distortion of the radio sound system, is probably not high on a lot of would-be viewers' lists.

But the experience was perfect. There are many glowing (yes, truly) things that I would say about the film, almost all of which relate to Heath Ledger's Phantom-esque turn as the Joker, and director Christopher Nolan's brilliant decision to make this a film about the villain more so than the hero.
The longer I sit with this film, the more I wind up thinking about its incredible moments of near-orchestral beauty (the image here epitomizing that facet of the film for me) and strange humanism. (On another day, with more time, I'd like to write about the "strange humanism" of the superhero genre more generally.) And the longer I think about how truly amazing Ledger's performance really was. I assume Jack Nicholson has been looking back at his own work in the 1989 Batman and lamenting what could have been.

But the things I liked about the film were only part of what I loved about the drive-in. Let me paint the picture. The North York Drive In is not, in actuality, in North York, but rather in the area of Holland Landing, outside of Newmarket, Ontario. It is, in effect, in that gray zone where a small suburban city like Newmarket rubs up against its completely, fantastically rural surrounds. The crowd was, I'd say, drawn from these communities. I felt like we stuck out rather obviously... not so much for our "urban" conspicuousness, however, as for our evident rookie approach to the event. Sure, we were there two hours ahead of sundown, anxious not to be shut out on the blockbuster's opening weekend. And naturally we brought a picnic, including a couple of tall cans of Strongbow. But we still lacked even the basic fundamentals: lawnchairs, a frisbee, a deck of cards, about twenty noisy, cigarette-smoking friends (that seemed to be a popular accessory), dogs, air mattresses, even laptops such as the one on which the middle-aged couple next to us watched another movie (Batman Begins?) during the wait til twilight. We brought snacks, and some work to edit.

The drive-in has three screens, the audience for each of which no doubt formed separate small communities, so I can't really say what went on in the parking lots for Mamma Mia or Hellboy 2. But at Screen 1, a carnival broke out. Children ran willy nilly like something out of a Roald Dahl tale; entire families seemed to gather; and eventually, as though everyone knew the code and as though the 1960s-era concession stand had sold its last freezie pop, the horns and flashing headlights started... a subtle inveigling to the (presumably) veteran projectionist camped away in the bunker-style booth (the door of which, strangely, seemed to be barred from the outside...) to start the show.

And start it did. The night unfolded despite audio difficulties (I don't think drive-in broadcast systems are especially satellite-radio-friendly), bugs, humidity, rain and even, eventually, Get Smart, leaving me with a newfound respect for the event of cinema and the communities it creates. Something was different from the usual anonymity of theatre-going at the drive-in. It didn't change the way I felt about the film, so much as the way I felt about watching a film. Taking part in a really, really old concept, going to the movies felt new again, and that was a powerful thing.

And then there was Trash Palace.

What can I really say about the Trash Palace? Check out the link and you will see just how much irony inheres in their self-description as Toronto's "classiest cinema." A labour of love for local print-shop runner and film-print collector Stacey Case, who devotes the 1,800 square feet of his shop to screenings every second Friday night, the Trash Palace is a shrine for the scummiest, B-filmiest, most pulpy cinema out there. We were invited by friends who moved to Toronto just over a year ago, and how they found out about the hushed-up screening programme before I did is something of a puzzle for me. The procedures for getting tickets are somewhat arcane - involving being at a certain coffee shop, at a certain time, on a certain day, as near as I can tell - and the address kept secret until you are officially a paid customer.

The roster of films, including pre-feature shorts (mostly trailers for some of the most egregiously unscary B-horrors ever made with some of the scariest, campiest soft core ever produced alongside them), are luridly, startlingly bad; so horrible they're amazing. Once discovering the secret downtown print-shop turned B-movie grotto, the uninitiated go underground into a realm of really uncomfortable seats (kinda like being back in the Spanish class room at my high school), where one can buy a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon for $3, can pee in a bathroom that's a like a glorified outhouse all dolled up (rather literally) in retro kitsh, and can - if one has purchased a membership - locate their card on the wall and punch it in on the time clock. And one can join a surprising, small population of hipsters and cinephiles and watch a film like The Thing with Two Heads, a social-problem horror film that borrows as much from blaxploitation and Dukes of Hazard's cop-hating car chases as from Frankenstein. It cannot easily be described. All I'll say is: two heads, one body; a monster at the motocross course; and a final scene in which three characters (one of whom recently lost some irksome extra weight that looked a lot like Ray Milland) driving off singing "Oh Happy Day." (Perhaps they were heading to their local drive-in?)

The feature was preceded by a (too long) short film produced decades ago by the Dairy Farmers' Association of America (I think), designed to terrify bankers with a Machiavellian hybrid of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and It's a Wonderful Life that would convince them to invest in more milk farmers.

There were shrieks and giggles, give-aways and custom-made truffles shaped like the Thing with Two Heads, and there were even some yawns as the feature's long final-reel chase sequence, well, dragged. But, in a way much like the experience I had at the drive in less than a week before it, last Friday's trip to the Trash Palace thrilled me. For someone working two jobs (a job with two heads?) related to cinema, and for whom film is a constant backdrop, generally associated with stress and to-do lists, it was amazing to make an event of the movies... even if what was onscreen was downright trashy.