The City (1939)

Articles for The City: "The City is about heaven and hell, riding the traditional bias of a rural America that saw cities as sin magnets. The city is the bad guy here. The small town is the good guy. Except that it doesn't quite work out that way as a viewing experience. Small-town America of the past and the neat little greenbelt communities of what the film hopes will be the future seem a bit false and forced, however well-intended. And life in Manhattan hums excitingly, even with the overdrive. This may be the place to mention that for many Americans living in the Pittsburghs or their farm and factory town equivalents, cities were what they longed to escape to, a view rudely but vigorously immortalized in the recently restored Baby Face (1933), to name but one cinematic barometer of the time. Not surprisingly, the city steals The City away from its good intentions. Most films of the period do. The real message they deliver, whether in frothy comedies or earnest documentaries, is that cities are where it's at. There's a reason why they are people magnets, and the more The City presses its indictment by speeding up the camera, the more we're struck by how vital its supposed target seems. One of the blatantly entertaining bits of editing involves quick cuts from traffic signs saying NO PEDESTRANS, NO RIGHT TURNS, NO CROSSING until it seems the city itself is saying NO to all forms of life."