The City

THE CITY is an American classic from 1939 in which the duo Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke, responsible for both the photography and the direction, describe the historical stages in the development of American cities. The documentary ends with an instruction by a group of urban planners: urban development should be decentralised. This was the starting shot for ‘suburbia’. The heart of the film is made up of images of life in Manhattan in 1939. In a style reminiscent of the hidden camera, city-dwellers and traffic blocks are filmed, topped by a marvellously edited sequence of a hectic street corner. THE CITY contains a message from a sponsor, but was shot in a highly individual style. Owing to that combination, THE CITY set the course for the sponsored documentary for at least the next two decades.