City of Towers is the third film in a series of four city symphonies directed by Gordon Sparling (1900–94) as part of the Canadian Cameos series for Associated Screen News (ASN), a Montreal-based studio. Here, the focus is “the spirit of Toronto, interpreted by her skyline,” according to ASN’s promotional team. City of Towers was conceived in 1934, during Toronto’s centennial, shot from 1934 until early 1935, and released in May 1935. Although their timing was a little off, ASN insisted that the film was still “a most timely addition to the Canadian Cameo Series, as Toronto has just celebrated its one hundredth birthday.”
As the film’s title suggests, the film focuses on Toronto’s many “towers”—its tallest monuments, steeples, and skyscrapers—and claims that it is these structures that hold the key to a deeper understanding of the city. The film’s publicity material describes the project as follows:
Towers reaching skyward … towers honoring the memory of fallen heroes. guarding the quiet haunts of university life … pointing slim fingers heavenward to the glory of God … testifying to the achievements of Big Business … guiding the deliberations of Ontario’s lawmakers … these are the skyline of Toronto, Canada’s City of Towers. And just as towers seem to dominate every phase of Toronto’s busy life, so City of Towers finds in them a striking medium for portraying the highlights of Ontario’s metropolis.
The film’s tone and pacing varies depending on what geographic regions of Toronto were being depicted. Thus, it’s treatment of the University of Tower, Sparling’s alma mater, is suitably subdued and contemplative, while its tour de force is its section on Toronto’s central business district. Not only does the film’s narration reach rhapsodic heights during this sequence, but so does its cinematography and editing, creating the sense of a hyperkinetic metropolis-in-the-making, one fueled by business and high finance.
Anthony Kinik
further reading
Morris, Peter, Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895–1939 (Montreal and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978).
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