In 2008, when Steven and Anthony gave a series of lectures and seminars on city symphonies of the 1920s and 1930s, they were struck by the fact that a general book-length study on the topic has never been made despite the involvement of so many important figures from the realms of film, art, design, and criticism, as well as the fact that several city symphonies are considered canonical works in the history of documentary cinema and experimental film. A theoretical study still remained to be published, but a comprehensive overview of this vast international cycle of films had not been compiled either. Apart from well-known and often-discussed films by Walter Ruttmann, Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, and Jean Vigo, there were dozens upon dozens of other city symphonies that were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, many of which have long since fallen into oblivion.
Aiming to offer just such a theoretical study and overview, this book project took off when Eva joined the team in 2013, thanks to a research project at Ghent University, which included the organization of the Beyond Ruttmann and Vertov: Minor City Symphonies symposium in December 2014. Designed to look beyond the most famous examples of the city symphony film—beyond Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), in particular—this symposium addressed a wider array of such films, which led to a fuller, more complete understanding of what this phenomenon entailed. Over the course of two days, 12 lesser-known city films were screened at KASK Cinema in Ghent: Moscow (1927), De Stad die Nooit Rust (1928), Skyscraper Symphony (1929), Stramilano (1929), Weltstadt in Flegeljahren: Ein Bericht über Chicago (1931), A Bronx Morning (1931), Ein Werktag (1931), Visions de Lourdes (1932), De Steeg (1932), Rhapsody in Two Languages (1934), Kleiner Film einer grossen Stadt … der Stadt Düsseldorf am Rhein (1935), and De Maasbruggen (1937). Scholars from Europe and North America, including a number of the contributors to this volume, presented papers introducing these films, and it is this set of presentations that forms the basis of this book. We were well aware that we would only be scratching the surface with this symposium, but the goal of expanding the discussion of such films beyond the most famous examples, and to watch these films in a cinema, on 35mm and 16mm prints and accompanied by live music, seemed a worthy one. At that point in time, we also had already identified a body of films numbering well over 80 titles and spanning four continents that were produced between 1920 and 1940 and that were either self- consciously made in the style of the city symphonies (as the form had come to be known after 1927, in the wake of the release of Ruttmann’s Berlin), or that were very closely related to this form of filmmaking.
In 2015 and 2016, in collaboration with the organizers of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, we were able to curate a number of screenings of city symphonies—virtually all of them obscure, forgotten, or only known locally in their countries of origin: Weltstadt in Flegeljahren: Ein Bericht über Chicago, Großstadt—Zigeuner, Hoogstraat, De Steeg, Pierement, Montparnasse, Les Halles, A Day in Liverpool, Douro: Faina fluvial, We Live in Prague, and Prague by Night (in 2015), as well as Así nació el obelisco, São Paulo: A Symphonia da Metropole, Budapest: The City of Spas and Cures, Halsted Street, Symphony of the Rebuilding of the Imperial Metropolis, Belgrade: The Capital of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Aimless Walk, Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse, Les Nuits électriques, La Zône: Au pays des chiffonniers, and Prater (in 2016). This book is very much a product of this series of screenings in Belgium and Italy, and the observations, connections, and revelations they inspired.
Combining close textual readings, theoretical analysis, and a comprehensive survey, this book consists of three parts. The first part is an extensive introductory chapter written by the editors, which explores the historical and theoretical aspects of the city symphony phenomenon. It discusses the rise, development, and proliferation of a specific form of city film shortly after the First World War, and it also addresses the demise of the city symphony from the late 1930s onwards. This introductory chapter also attempts to define the city symphony as a genre, describing and analyzing its semantic and syntactic characteristics. It presents the interwar city symphony as an “experimental documentary” on the city, while also emphasizing its reliance on elements of fiction, narrativization, and staging. Furthermore, the first part of this book draws attention to formal and thematic connections between city symphonies and contemporaneous trends in the arts—especially painting and photography—while also investigating how the city symphony form reflected the aspirations and concerns of several avant-garde movements that were active at the time. In addition, this essay attempts to demonstrate how interwar city symphonies make manifest many of the key topics of modern urban theory, as developed in the writings by Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. In so doing, this book indicates that the city symphony cycle captures a specific moment in urban history: that of the modern and industrial metropolis characterized by centralization and congestion. In the process, the first part of this book refers extensively to famous examples such as Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta (1921), Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice (1930), and Joris Ivens’s Rain (1929), but it also discusses many lesser-known films made in dozens of countries around the world during the 1920s and 1930s.
A (re)discovery and a revalorization of these lesser-known films is crucial to the rationale of this entire book and they constitute the focus of its second part. This middle part comprises a series of brief chapters, many of them focusing on a single film such as Walter Ruttmann’s Kleiner Film einer grossen Stadt … der Stadt Düsseldorf am Rhein (1935) by Michael Cowan, Mikhail Kaufman and Ilya Kopalin’s Moscow (1926) by Malcolm Turvey, Robert Florey’s Skyscraper Symphony (1929) by Merrill Schleier, Corrado D’Errico’s Stramilano (1929) by John David Rhodes, Jan Koelinga’s De Steeg (1932) by Ivo Blom, Paul Schuitema’s De Maasbruggen (1937) by Floris Paalman, Andor von Barsy and Friedrich von Maydell’s De Stad die Nooit Rust (1928) by Eva Hielscher, Conrad Friberg’s Halsted Street (1934) by Tom Gunning, Heinrich Hauser’s Weltstadt in Flegeljahren: Ein Bericht über Chicago (1931) by Eva Hielscher, Jay Leyda’s A Bronx Morning (1931) by Jan-Christopher Horak, Rudolph Rex Lustig and Adalberto Kemeney’s São Paulo: A Symphonia da Metropole (1929) by Cristina Meneguello, and Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke’s The City (1939) by Anthony Kinik. Other chapters deal with a small group of closely related films such as the essays on Moholy-Nagy’s contributions to the city symphony cycle by Malte Hagener, lesser-known Paris city symphonies by Christa Blümlinger, Robert Florey’s Skyscraper Symphony (1929) and his Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (with Slavko Vorkapitch and Gregg Toland, 1927) by Merrill Schleier, the Belgian city symphonies by Henri Storck and Charles Dekeukeleire by Steven Jacobs, and Gordon Sparling’s four Canadian city symphonies—Rhapsody in Two Languages (1934), The Westminster of the West (1934), City of Towers (1935), and Vancouver Vignette (1936)—by Anthony Kinik. By drawing attention to these “minor” city symphonies, this book not only demonstrates the global proliferation and importance of the city symphony phenomenon, it also shows that it was much more complex and multi-layered than has been generally assumed.
The third and final part of the book expands this collection of films further in the form of an extensive annotated filmography containing more than 80 both famous and lesser-known city symphonies made between the two world wars. Apart from offering a brief description of each film and an indication of its specific characteristics, this filmography also draws attention to how these films contributed to an interwar film culture that was the product of the intersection of documentary, experimental, avant-garde, amateur, commercial, and industrial practices, and that was propagated in film journals, in ciné-clubs, in film societies, and in conferences and festivals. In so doing, this filmography contributes yet another layer of context to what we hope is a thoughtful and comprehensive account of what was indeed a cinematic phenomenon.