Skyscraper

"Skyscraper" is a film that was nominated for the Oscar for Best Live Action Short...losing to Jacques Cousteau's "The Golden Fish".

The story is about the building of a skyscraper, the Tishman Building on 5th Avenue in New York, from start to finish. I did appreciate how the film talks about the many different types of workers needed for this task. What I didn't appreciate was all the jazz music and occasional use of rhymes. I much preferred when the film consisted of several very New York-like guys talking about their work on the project. Overall, very stylistic but not a film I fell in love with...though I did appreciate parts of it, such as the selective use of color (sometimes hand colored) in order to make the black & white cinematography pop at the end.

This short documentary gives the viewer a sense of the magnitude of the task of putting up a skyscraper in Manhattan, in this case, the Tishman building at 666 Fifth Avenue (now 660). Architectural details like the original aluminum curtain wall comprised of relatively lightweight panels embossed with geometrical patterns and inserted between windows may hold some interest, but there really isn't a lot of meat to what's presented. Unfortunately it's saddled with dopey narration from some of the men who worked on the project who say things like "hey, that's me!" and answer each other's questions as the footage plays. The jazzy soundtrack is also tedious because the lyrics are so forced to fit a construction project ("It takes a lotta men..."). The fact that Shirley Clarke chose a subject that's often taken for granted is praiseworthy but the way she went about it hasn't aged particularly well. It's a good thing it was only 21 minutes, or I have a feeling I may have begun disliking it.

There's a wonderful sense of anticipation, hearing of an exciting theme or gripping plot. And then the enjoyment of seeing it realised on screen. But what of the 'dull' themes that unexpectedly turn out to be enthralling? Isn't there an even greater sense of thrill, as we ask, "How did they make such a riveting film out of such ordinary material? Shirley Clarke's brush with Hollywood came with an Oscar nomination for this early experimental documentary. About a building. The Tishmann Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York, to be exact.

Immediately Skyscraper starts we are propelled into a new perspective. Voices off-camera are discussing the film, looking out for people they know. It gives the film an immediacy and intimacy. It feels as if this is a private film made for, by, and about, the workers. As if they are watching it at a private screening. Construction workers are recognised by name. We are part of an inner circle. A circle that is at the heart of all the practical issues. Why are there 'bumps' on the cladding enquires one voice? A colleague explains that it increases strength. (The voices are in reality actors playing workers.) When we are sitting on the girders high above the tarmac below, this closeness almost induces vertigo. What would induce panic in most normal people is made real enough to touch as they open their sandwiches on a work break.

Camera techniques recall both sequences from Brussels Loops – where construction was filmed so fascinatingly – and Bridges-Go-Round – where geometrical shapes are studied for their own unique beauty. Jazz songs reflect various stages of the process (The film's irreverent tone has even caused it to be described as a 'musical comedy.') Jazz music was a genre Clarke would continue to develop into her features, etching a free-flowing realism, such as in her more-real-than-real depiction of Harlem in The Cool World. But in Skyscraper we see her using the medium in perfect harmony with the subject, the words of the songs immortalising the building as if it were the subject of folklore and the sort of thing people would naturally write songs about.

Skyscraper shows a master filmmaker taking a seemingly random subject and re-creating it with a depth and sense of awe that enriches the world around us.

Clarke was not particular pleased to be nominated for an Oscar – by an institution she had little respect for. Later, when Roger Vadim tried to draw her into mainstream, she retorted, "What Roger wanted was for me to be 22 years old. I realised that he didn't have any idea who the f*** I was... He wanted me to shoot his script, each scene in wide, medium and close-up so that later on he could edit it. For me to make a cheapy film I didn't respect with a script I didn't like, without the right to at least do it the way I want, for God's sakes, that's insane." Clarke never bowed to Hollywood, even when they bowed to her. Skyscraper would set the tone of the rest of her career. Pure class.

Somehow I couldn't help but think, here, that the buildings that were being demolished were considerably more characterful than the glass and concrete structures that were replacing them. Anyway, this short documentary introduces us to a building crew and to the activities of those tasked with the construction and assembly involved in putting up New York's Tishman Building on 5th Avenue. From the surveyors, architects, draughtsmen through the entire excavation and occasionally quite perilous construction process we see it rise like the proverbial phoenix. It's quite watchable this, but the director has a bit of a penchant for too much crooning and what might even pass for some early rap, before we get some natural sound and images of the site-clearing and the building. Interestingly, they take the debris to New Jersey to help infill the marshland there. Technology and manual labour work closely together and luckily we cram most of this extended process into a 20 minutes that is peppered with a lively narration from those responsible for doing the work - indoor and out. I still get slightly acrophobic watching these folk walking tight-rope shaped steel girders hundreds of feet in the air. Not a job - or a watch - for the feint hearted! Who knew 20% of the costs went on the air-con installation, or that the fitting took as long as the frame?

High steel men work on the structuref the building. Occasionally they get a glimpsef Saint Patrick's Cathedral across the street. Meanwhile guys with dese-dem-dose tones talk about the building they're putting up, alternating with Steve Lawrence, Frank Sinatra, and other cool hipsters of the era sing about the working stiff.

Back when Shirley Madison and associates shot this Academy Award nominated short, it was put up as an act of defiance. You could see it in address in neon at the top: 666, the number of the beast. It's become more generic in the past few years, and now it's 660 Fifth Avenue. But this short still swings.