| The City | ||
|---|---|---|
| This clip is not available for streaming at this time. Please contact WPA. | Tape Master: | 11284 |
| Catalog #: | 490319 | |
| Clip Number: | 490319-1 | |
| Orginal Film: | NTOWNS-007 | |
| Timecode: | ||
| Location: | New York City and Metropolitan Area | |
| Year Shot: | 1986 (Actual Year) | |
| Audio: | Yes | |
| Color: | No | |
| Headings: | CITY PLANNING: New Towns | |
| Description: | 17.26.10-Shots of the blacksmith's shed, c/s a fire being stoked to mend the steel hoop for the wagon wheel. C/S of MOLTEN METAL being poured, context is ambiguous, the music gets ominous. Further shots reveal that this is the inside of a mammoth modern STEEL MILL. Shots of workers dwarfed by the machinery, showers of sparks, billowing smoke. Shots of RAILWAY YARD with huge train locomotive pulling through, grotesque clouds of smoke, giant mountain of slag from the steel mill, very interesting shot of a man walking down this giant pile of industrial refuse. C/S of a machine dumping a vat of molten metal down the side of the slagheap, interspersed with shot of the man walking down the treacherous slope through thick haze of smoke. 17.28.38-Long shots of mammoth steel mill. V.O. announcer-the modern industrial present is wiping out the quiet past of life. Shots of smokestacks, the announcer delivers a monologue of industrialization and production, with industry growing out of control and machinery coming to dominate life. Pan from the mill over a river, huge cloud of smoke, to the industrial slums on the other side of the river. Series of shots of these slums, dirty, smoke shrouded, dead barren trees. Shot of a man walking dejectedly through the slum. Interspersed shots of INDUSTRIAL AGE SLUM, giant line of mill smokestacks, sickly looking young children in the slums, one young urchin slides down a railing on his feet [if he had a skateboard, it would be called a grind-very important anthropological evidence of the prewar antecedents of thrasher culture!!!]. Ominous shot of a group of boys running across wide cluster of railroad tracks as a train whistle sounds [potent metaphor for the general gist of the film that industrialism is leading our future generations to a trainwreck of urban congestion, pollution, and overcrowding]. Shot of the train passing by. Wide shot of a dirty street lined with flimsy shacks. More shots of abject industrial age poverty and proletarian degradation; dramatic series of shots of people hand-pumping water from wells as the announcer talks about the tractors, automobiles, and skyscrapers that these people's labor produces. A man washing his dirty hands in a basin, a woman firing a coal stove. Series of shots of trains, cranes, and factories belching smoke. | |
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