The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars(AFI Film Readers)

The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of the city symphony, an experimental film form that presented the city as protagonist instead of mere decor. Combining experimental, documentary, and narrative practices, these films were marked by a high level of abstraction reminiscent of high-modernist experiments in painting and photography. Moreover, interwar city symphonies presented a highly fragmented, oftentimes kaleidoscopic sense of modern life, and they organized their urban-industrial images through rhythmic and associative montage that evoke musical structures. In this comprehensive volume, contributors consider the full 80 film corpus, from Manhatta and Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt to lesser-known cinematic explorations.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Introduction: The City Symphony Phenomenon 1920-1940 Steven Jacobs, Anthony Kinik, and Eva Hielscher Part II: 1. László MoholyNagy and the City (Symphony) Malte Hagener 2. Productive City: Ruttmann’s Düsseldorf: Kleiner Film einer großen Stadt Michael Cowan 3. Minor Paris City Symphonies Christa Blümlinger 4. Kaufman and Kopalin’s Moscow Malcolm Turvey 5. A Parisian in Manhattan: Florey’s Skyscraper Symphony Merrill Schleier 6. D’Errico’s Stramilano John David Rhodes 7. Belgian Variations on the City Symphony Theme Steven Jacobs 8. Koelinga’s De Steeg: Palimpsest and Parallax Historiography Ivo Blom 9. Schuitema’s De Maasbruggen: City and Film as a Process Floris Paalman 10. Von Barsy and Von Maydell’s The City that Never Rests: A Port City Symphony Eva Hielscher 11. Hauser’s Weltstadt in Flegeljahren: An Americanist City Symphony Eva Hielscher 12. Oneway Street: Conrad’s Halsted Street Tom Gunning 13. Leyda’s A Bronx Morning JanChristopher Horak 14. Kemeny and Lustig’s Sao Paolo, a Symphonia da Metropole Cristina Menguello 15. Sparling’s Canadian City Symphonies Anthony Kinik 16. Steiner and Van Dyke’s The City Anthony Kinik Part III: 17. A Survey of City Symphonies 19201940 Eva Hielscher, Steven Jacobs, and Anthony Kinik

About the Author :
Steven Jacobs is an art historian who specializes in the relation between film and the visual arts. His publications include The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock; Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts; and The Dark Galleries: A Museum Guide to Painted Portraits in Film Noir. He teaches at Ghent University and the University of Antwerp. Anthony Kinik’s work spans documentary, experimental, avant-garde, and industrial practices, and his principal focus in recent years has been on the cinematic depiction of the urban environment, including the city symphonies cycle of the interwar period and Montreal as a “cinematic city” in the 1960s. He is an Assistant Professor of Film Studies with the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario. Eva Hielscher is a film scholar, curator, and moving image archivist. She holds an MA degree in “Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image” from the University of Amsterdam and has worked as a PhD researcher at Ghent University.

Review :
"The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars, a product of scholarly sleuthing and obsession, is a fascinating and valuable achievement." - Charles Musser, Yale University, USA "With the publication of The City Symphony Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars, editors Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, and Anthony Kinik have created an invaluable contribution to the understanding of this compelling form of international film modernism." - S. Topiary Landberg, UCSC, USA