A Film Canon

Manhatta synthesises and aestheticises the extensive tradition of New York City actuality films, integrating a number of their recurrent topoi - point-of-view shots from the Hudson, the Brooklyn Bridge, skyscrapers and skyscraper construction sites - into an extended visual poem. Although the beautiful compositions are indebted to Strand and Sheeler's extensive photographic careers, the brilliance of the film lies in its handling of montage, most evident in the opening movement from the Hudson, to a packed ferry, to a crowded street and, eventually, to a cemetery. This creates a profound emotional residue absent from (or at least only latent in) the actuality tradition, which, suffusing every picture, identifes itself with the smoke that drifts evocatively from roofs, steam trains and ocean cruisers. As the use of Whitman's Leaves Of Grass in the intertitles might suggest, this emotion is profoundly Romantic, positing the city as an epiphany, an overwhelming experience that is nevertheless available to the individual eye, as evinced both in the extent to which images respect the parameters of the frame, as well as the inclusive, panoramic vistas with which the film ends, embedding the island in a sea of sparkling light.