Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.
Manhatta is a landmark city symphony film — one of the earliest examples of the form, and among the most influential. Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's cinematography is genuinely exceptional, translating the Precisionist aesthetic into moving images with stunning compositional rigor: geometric framing, dramatic angles on skyscrapers, and a painterly feel that prefigures decades of avant-garde documentary. Novelty is very high — this short essentially invented the city symphony genre and its marriage of Whitman's poetry with urban imagery is singular. Acting is a non-category (rated 1 accordingly for a film of pure observational documentary). The plot is minimal by design — a loose dawn-to-dusk structure that serves its poetic purpose without narrative ambition. The ending, a fading harbor sunset, is quietly beautiful but not especially distinctive.