Opiniones de usuarios

This short film by Sheeler and Strand is the father of American avant-garde cinema.

It contains beautiful shots of Manhattan shown intertwined with excerpts of a Walt Whitman poem. All of the shots are thought out, and very photographic in nature. But that is expected with Paul Strand behind the camera.

This film is probably the first American avant-garde film, and if it isn't, it is definitely the first influential avant-garde film. A guideline for future American avant-garde filmmakers to follow.

A true visual treat, even for today's standard.

Preface: Due to the nature of such a short film, any valid review will contain some evidence of a "spoiler." This review is no exception.

Paul Strand's "Manhatta" is more than just the simple, pioneering piece in early cinema. "Manhatta" is a representation of New York City through the eyes of a still photographer. Strand uses the format of motion picture to create a sense of life. Similar to his New York still photography, each moving image frames city life, angles, and other objects with semi-avant-garde detail. Strand's own "mentor," Alfred Stieglitz, greatly appreciated the new form of city photography, publishing it in "Camera Work" and in his gallery 291.

In the movie, the blowing smoke, walking people, moving ships, and other objects in motion are what separate the motion picture from a photo album. Instead of portraying New York as an iconic, prosperous city, Strand has been able to portray New York City as an organism that contains a immigrant working class.

In my opinion, "Manhatta" commands the respect of many early motion pictures, influencing many great, more popular films.

This experimental movie of Paul Strand about Manhattan is extremely important to the future generations of directors. Paul Strand is like a bird in Manhattan, showing the daily life and the most characteristic points of it. Manhattan is shown in a Bird's eye shot(I think that it's the name in English, kind like the public was God himself. I never went to Manhattan, but in 10 minutes I visited, understood and felt Manhattan. It is amazing how in such a short time, he can illustrate, in a interesting and original way, this mediatic place. Paul Strand is like a magician that takes photos of Manhattan and give life to them. A great short that definitely is a mark on cinema's experimental history.

Here's the beginning of the city symphony film, which would include "Berlin: Symphony of a City" (1927) and "The Man with a Movie Camera" (1929). Although "Manhatta" doesn't contain the rapid rhythmic montage of some of the later city symphonies, it does have a sort of slower, poetic rhythm to it. It's discernible from a travelogue in that it has something to say about its city, other than it's a nice place to visit. The steady progression of images interloped with poetic intertitles taken from Walt Whitman produce the rhythm.

From the still photographer Paul Strand and the painter and still photographer Charles Sheeler, their view of Manhattan is, of course, modern. The shots are of skyscrapers and the inter-workings of the city. One is Strand's 1915 still photograph "Wall Street" come to motion. The composition, camera placement and observation of light and shadow are striking throughout the short film, and they are reflective of the work by the filmmakers in other media. Sheeler and Strand had already transplanted modern, abstract and formal ideas from painting into still photography and with "Manhatta" they similarly redirected film.

This groundbreaking silent documentary captures the beauty and majesty of the New York City in its streets, skyscrapers, bridges, rail yards and harbors.

Is this film groundbreaking? I would have to agree with that. But unfortunately, it doesn't break nearly as much ground as it could. The film reminds me of "Berlin", the documentary made by Karl Freund and Carl Mayer, among others. The big difference being that "Manhatta" is not particularly long.

And that is why I can only give it so much love, because I wish more of 1920s New York was captured on film, an era that is still remembered fondly today (2017). Any document would be somewhat priceless to the right people.

MANHATTA is an unusual short film. It's like the merging of a travelogue with a poem. So, as the camera moves artistically about the city of New York, the scenes are punctuated with intertitle cards that have poetic verse on them that make it all seem grand and majestic.

While much of this won't appeal to most viewers, the film is still worth seeing for two important reasons. First, the short is a wonderful historical record of the city. In other films of the era, New York is incidental, in a way. You might see bits and pieces of the city, but the city is not the star. Here, however, you see so much of the town that you wouldn't see otherwise--and much of it is gone today. Second, the film is very artistic in its cinematography--with wonderful aerial shots as well as nicely frames shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and the like.

Perhaps not exciting, but a rather important document. And, despite the original negatives being missing and only one print in existence until it was restored, the print looks great!

Cinema had matured enough in the year 1921 to allow imaginative experimentation with celluloid. Two photographers combined Walt Whitman's lines of poetry with 65 filmed shots of New York City's Manhattan Island to produced their short movie 1921's "Manhatta." Some cite the pair's brief film as the first avant-garde work in moving pictures.

Charles Sheeler, a painter/photographer, and Paul Strand, photographer, decided to base their short project on passages from Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass.' They set their motion picture camera high above the city landscape, framing each of their 65 shots like they were using a still camera, dictating the artistry of the city's buildings and transport vehicles to determine its positioning. The camera rarely moves during each shot and sustains mostly wide shots of the city.

Not only does "Manhatta" serve as a fascinating historic photographic record of New York City over 100 years ago, it also reflects how humans apoear to be overwhelmed by the gigantic concrete structures and mammoth transports surrounding them. One particular visual exemplifying such magnitude is when a horde of workers crowd the stern of a ferry and unload in a rush to get where they need to go.

"Manhatta" was rarely shown after its completion, and when it did the movie was more of a curiosity. In 1950, a worn print of the short was discovered in a British film vault, and an archivist, beginning in 2005, spent four years to restore it to its current pristine form.

Considered by some to be the first American Avant-Garde film, "Manhatta" is New York City at the dawn of the Jazz Age in brief concrete slices. Filmed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand, both luminaries of the great Precisionism movement in art, this 11 minute short is a perspective of Manhattan from a lofty point of view serving as complementary and reflective mirror pieces to the words of Walt Whitman's tribute to the great metropolis. Skyscrapers, sunlight-reflected rivers, ships, smoke-emitting factories, bridges, construction workers hard at work, fleets of automobiles and the milling crowd; these images herald and pay tribute to a burgeoning superpower flexing its muscle.

The sole snag in what could have been a standout visual testament is the lack of the heart, pulse and soul of a living, breathing urbanity: people. Shot from high vantage points humanity is depicted as distant scurrying ants heading into their interior unknown worlds. As awful as people are they make this existence and the failure to reveal what makes them tick is this flick's kryptonite. A shame, as seeing those fedoras, Model-T's and dainty flappers highlight it all the more - distinct scenes of material and invisible sound from a bygone era captured for posterity.

One of the finest silent films and a progenitor of future films with the city as muse and art like "Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis" and "Man with a Movie Camera", "Manhatta" is a short and sweet tribute in film to one of the great cities of the world and its embodiment of power, technology and soul.

Instead of having a filmmaker attempting to be painterly, this poetic gem boasts both a major painter (Sheeler) and a major photographer (Strand) collaborating.

This is the earliest view of Manhattan we have that is neither simple-minded documentation nor backdrop to melodrama. The visuals are striking, and stand up well to later, more gimmicky, film realizations of what makes Skyscraper National Park so special.

The Walt Whitman title cards would probably have worked better as voiceover narration in the sound era, but offer a strong romantic framework for the powerful imagery. A classic, not to be missed.

One of the earliest "city symphonies", and arguably one of the most groundbreaking avant garde films of the 1920's, 'Manhatta' is a lyrical, slow, and moving tribute to a great American city based loosely off of a Walt Whitman poem. The imagery isn't as intense and vibrant as that in many other films of a similar nature, whether they be other city symphonies or just other avant garde/experimental films in general, but there are several shots in here that definitely widened my eyes. The very specific positioning of the camera for certain angles helped give much of the short film a very epic feel. At some points, it even felt extremely futuristic and, to me, evoked some shots from Fritz Lang's legendary classic 'Metropolis'. It's only about twelve minutes, so any fan of experimental film might as well check it out as it is highly revolutionary and visually pleasing.

It's an 11 minute silent short of Manhattan cityscape. It talks a lot about building and skyscrapers. Along with a variety of city life, it does follow some construction. It's missing the 1st POV on walking the steel beams. I don't know how heavy was the camera but they could have given it to a construction worker so that he could film high up. I need that sense of vertigo. I guess they do have to hand crank the camera but construction workers are really coordinated. They do obviously film from some rooftops or high windows to get the high vantage point. It's not the same thing. The construction of each film frame looks very artistic. This looks really good. I just need the high beam walk for it to be perfect.

The film-makers' names are proudly displayed no fewer than 3 times during the credits of this one (the card prepared by Kino before each short on the DVDs included); the end result, however, is nothing to write home about – its principal value nowadays is as a time-capsule, and a dull one at that! It is yet another 'film poem' devoted to the nerve centre of New York City, teeming with people (as witnessed by shiploads of arriving passengers!) and activity. Still, as already intimated, very little of interest is actually captured on celluloid – and the photography is pretty ordinary to boot! The literal translation of "avant-garde" is something that is "forward-looking": tellingly, the one thing I was looking forward to as I lay watching this was its conclusion!

Manhatta (1921)

**** (out of 4)

Cinematographer Paul Strand and painter Charles Sheeler teamed up to make this movie, which was their attempt to show their love for the city of Manhattan. The say they achieved in showing that love would be an understatement because this 11-minute movie is extremely well-made and contains some downright break taking visuals. The semi-documentary film has various images of the city put together in no real order nor do they try to tell a story out of the images. Instead we just see various items from the city, ranging from haze rising over buildings to various ships on the water. All of these images make for an incredible film because it really seems like you're watching a science-fiction film with a bunch of fake images. It's rather amazing at how well the cinematography is here because unlike many, or perhaps any film, this one here puts you so close to what you're looking at that it's nearly impossible to remember you're watching a movie. This is certainly one of the most beautiful looking films I've seen and perhaps the start of what would become avant-garde film and one has to wonder if Stanley Kubrick saw this and learned from it.

This wonderful documentary offers a glimpse of New York City from a bygone era, when the city had factories, and steam ships we docked in the harbor and when steam and smoke was bellowing into the sky, a time of industry, of power, and economic might. The documentary suggests an industrious people, a mass of humanity inhabiting a great metropolis, uniquely American, bristling with unbounded energy. The great ocean liner entering the harbor, the impressive buildings, some of which still exist today but back then glistening structures, the epitome of modern design, all suggesting a society in which the sky's the limit. This is a great documentary.

There's very little, if anything, memorable about "Manhatta." Besides being one of the original "city symphony" films, paving the way for better works like "Berlin: die sinfonie der Grobstadt" (which I think translates into "Berlin: Symphony of a City)" and Pennebaker's "Daybreak Express," to name two, all it really offers to modern audiences is a reason to fall asleep. Manhatta is mainly made up of static, or at best, phlegmatic shots, and has inter-titles quoting Walt Whitman. The camera has a strange obsession with smoke billowing from chimneys of boats and factories. It's a pioneer of a new land that was soon in the hands of more skillful developers.

Manhatta aka New York the Magnificent is a collaborative work by painter Paul Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand in an attempt to define and document the early days of the skyscraper metropolis defined best by the city of New York.

What is generally regarded as the first city documentary, Manhatta does not have the energy or fast paced editing of later 20s city examinations such as the invaluable Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, by Walter Ruttman, made less than a generation before its destruction and Ivan Zertov's magnificent Man with a Movie Camera (1929) but its influence is clear as it depicts the phenomena and draw of big city living and its fast paced ways.

Accompanied by writer Walt Whitman title cards reciting his poem "Mannahatta", iconic photographer Strand and Sheeler capture images of Gotham still unsurpassed in both their sedate grace and energetic calamity. Eleven minutes in length, serenely presented., it holds its own to this day as a valuable timepiece.

Back when this short was first released, it was probably considered more of an artistic film than a documentary. It gave people back then who didn't live in the "big city" a view of life in then contemporary New York City. And the short does succeed on that level.

But now that almost a century has passed it's become a kind of historical document, a glimpse of how people actually lived in 1921 New York City without the distortions you get in dramatic movies. Today some of the scenes seem very familiar with modern New York City (for example, the crowds disembarking a ferry) while others point to an era long gone. One difference between then and now is the tone of the film. There's no doubt the film is celebrating life in a large metropolis and the society that built it while today such a film would instead try to impress on us how dysfunctional big city life has become.

As time passes I can imagine what to us still seems commonplace in this film will become even more cryptic to our descendants. Centuries from now historians and anthropologists will go over this documentary almost frame by frame for clues as to how actually people lived in cities.