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Urban Planning and the Spaces of Democracy: New York of the Great Depression in 42nd Street, Dead End , and The City

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 51; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14735781003795158

1473-5784

Vojislava Filipcevic,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

Abstract Three New York films of the Great Depression and its aftermath, 42nd Street (1932, Lloyd Bacon), Dead End (1937, William Wyler), and The City (1939, Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke), embodied a new political aesthetics in screening urban democratic spaces during moments of social breakdown. This article draws from urban and cinema studies, as well as from social and cultural theory (Lefebvre, Benjamin, Kracauer), to show how these films contributed to a discourse of urban planning and cinematic democratic aesthetics on the possibility of an egalitarian, inclusive, participatory community in diverse city spaces. The article argues that the reshaping of this cultural discourse, through the films' emphasis on the conflicting material domains of the skyline and the slum, came at the cost of undermining the metropolis and, in The City, of limiting the urban spaces of democracy. Acknowledgments For thoughtful comments and encouragement regarding publication and conference presentations of earlier drafts of this article, I am thankful to Ira Katznelson, Herbert J. Gans, Joseph Entin, Daniel Walkowitz, Elliott Sclar, Marshall Berman, Richard Peña, Stuart Klawans, Deborah Carmichael, Alissa Karl, Dana Polan, Jon Simmons, Joan Hawkins, Mark Millington, and the anonymous peer reviewers of Culture, Theory and Critique. Notes 1 The Warner Brothers studio that made 42nd Street specialized in social problem narratives. Dead End was a production of Samuel Goldwyn, who also produced class‐conscious films, such as Street Scene (1931, d. King Vidor). The City, screened at the New York World's Fair (1939), is the most significant urban planning documentary of the first half of the twentieth century. Dead End can be compared to the early 1930s gangster genre films set in Chicago, most notably Little Caesar (1931, d. Mervyn LeRoy), Public Enemy (1931, d. William Wellman), as well as to Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, d. Michael Curtiz) set in New York, along with other films that feature 'the city boy' as a new social type. Dead End can be seen as precursor to the films starring John Garfield, especially Body and Soul (1947, d. Robert Rossen), whose narrative is in dialogue with the 1930s proletarian cinema. The collaboration and community among the very poor living in Central Park in Hallelujah, I'm A Bum (1933, d. Lewis Milestone) could further be contrasted with public spaces in Dead End and 42nd Street. The latter is often discussed in relationship to other Busby Berkely musicals, including Gold Diggers of 1933 (d. Mervyn LeRoy) and Gold Diggers of 1935 (d. Busby Berkeley), but could further be compared to on the one hand, My Man Godfrey (1936, d. Gregory La Cava) and New York of the Thin Man series, as well as on, the other extreme, Skyscraper Souls (1932, d. Edgar Selvyn). Landscapes and extra‐urban communities in The City can be compared to the rural settings in the documentaries by Pare Lorentz' The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) and The River (1937) as well as to on the one hand, the agrarian collaborative and self‐help motifs in Our Daily Bread (1934, d. King Vidor) and on the other, to the role of the state in Power and the Land (1940, d. Joris Ivens). The City's implicit evocation of political crises can be compared to Native Land (1942, Leo Hurwitz and Paul Strand) and the documentary work of the members of the Workers Film and Photo League, and contrasted with Gabriel Over the White House (1933, d. Gregory La Cava). The City's critique of the machine age city could also be examined in relation to William Wellman's Heroes for Sale (1933) and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). Poetic urban documentaries from the 1930s are rare, with A Bronx Morning (1931, d. Jay Leyda) as an outstanding example. The influences of Dead End and The City can also be traced in films noir of the late 1940s films that applied documentary realist techniques, The Naked City (1949, d. Jules Dassin) and Call Northside 777 (1948, d. Henry Hathaway). The skyline in all three films can further be compared to the New York imagery in King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack). For a discussion of films from the 1930s, see for example Wolfe Citation1993; Bergman Citation1992; Hanson Citation2008. 2 By the early 1930s, Soviet and German filmmakers had demonstrated the political powers of film, and while Hollywood had for the most part seen film as entertainment, important exceptions included the filmmakers sympathetic with left‐wing social issues, members of the Hollywood Anti‐Nazi League (formed in 1936) and of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (created in the summer of 1938). Socio‐political engagement in Hollywood was a result of the interplay of influences between European exiles and radical American urban intellectuals, limited by commercial interests of studio executives, by censorship pressures, and by the public perception of Hollywood. The concerted emphasis by European exiles and American intellectuals (many of whom came from New York) on democratic populism during the Depression did not entail a shift away from commercial cinema and toward an explicit socially‐ or class‐conscious narrative. Rather, in the 1930s, forms of both escapist entertainment and social engagement were present, an uneasy coalition that would end with the growing influence of Martin Dies' House on Un‐American Activities Committee. (See Balio Citation1993; Bodnar Citation2003; Giovacchini Citation2001; Krutnik Citation2007; Neve Citation1992a; Neve Citation1992b; Sklar Citation1975.) 3 New York films of the Great Depression represent a critical unexplored linkage between the 1920s metropolitan cinema and in the late 1940s film noir. While academic scholarship on cinema and the city has focused extensively on the 1920s as well as on the spatial themes in noir, city films from the 1930s are rarely discussed and are almost never connected to cultural theory or urban studies literature. (See Bruno Citation2002; Clarke Citation1997; Dimendberg Citation2004; Fitzmaurice and Shiel Citation2003; Krutnik Citation1991; Shiel and Fitzmaurice Citation2001.) 4 This figure is in comparison to 35% of films set in the metropolis in 1920, 45% in 1940 and 30% in 1945, based on the evidence collected through a systemic sampling technique of film‐plot synopses of hundreds of profiles in Motion Picture Herald (May Citation2000: 293). 5 The three urban films meet Jacques Rancière's normative requirement for a 'political work of art'. This is expressed as a 'negotiation of opposites, between the readability of the message that threatens to destroy the sensible form of art and the radical uncanniness that threatens to destroy all political meaning'. Rancière, however, neglects the nexus between socio‐political images and cinematic spaces (Rancière Citation2006: 63). 6 Cinematic spaces can contain imagined spaces (often, although not solely, in studio productions), lived experiences (documentary images or sequences), and/or a combination of both. 7 The tower imagery is in Bender's analysis separate from the skyline vision. The former is tied explicitly to commerce if seen as a distinct skyscraper (the Chrysler, for example), while the latter shapes the material grounds of the public domain (visual landmarks within the skyline, for instance). See Chapter One in Bender (Citation2002). Daniel Walkowitz has noted that this argument neglects the contested discourses regarding the public realm, and the ways in which different audiences interpreted their relationships to the plurality of New York representations. Discussions with Daniel Walkowitz, 11–14 October 2007. 8 'Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have locked us up hopelessly. Then came film and burst this prison world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far‐flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling' (see Benjamin Citation1968: 236). 9 Praised in 1933 by film industry publication Harrison's Reports as 'a fine entertainment … realistically presented' and by critics in The New York Times as 'one of the liveliest and the most tuneful screen musical comedies that have come out of Hollywood', 42nd Street in more contemporary evaluations retains appeal ('42nd Street', Citation1933; Hall Citation1933). Seen as a musical of pre‐Disney Times Square still suitable for young audiences in New York Post's estimate (Musetto, Citation1998), and in contrast as 'a fascinating ideological time capsule – with its persistent emphasis on teamwork, full employment, and strong leadership' in the words of The Voice critic (Hoberman Citation1982). 10 In the novel upon which the film is based, the director is presented as a homosexual, an aspect the otherwise heterosexual film treats only obliquely. See James et al Citation1980; Leff Citation1999. 11 Jane Feuer argues that Hollywood musicals allow for the triumph of popular genre over high art, amateurs over professionals, outsiders over insiders, and also folk art over urbanity. Lyn Phelan, in a related argument, further suggests that 42nd Street's embrace of the New Deal ethos is applied to humanize capitalism (Feuer and British Film Institute Citation1993: 14–15; Phelan Citation2000). 12 In Keeler's account, the film captured every chorus girl's desire to succeed, even if the desire is framed through a masculine lens of how the success ought to be accomplished, emphasized by the repositioning of the focus of spectatorship on the show's director whose career is at stake. (Ironically and importantly, labor conditions to which the actors and dancers were subject at the time could hardly be described as equitable.) In turn, Keeler's looks into the camera in the direct‐address musical sequences reestablish a connection with the audience, and mediate between the spectator and the cinematic spaces of the show in the film as well as within the musical comedy. (The need for Keeler's mediation with the audience is heightened by the fact that the audience within the show Pretty Lady is absent from the film; placing proscenium and the audience within the show will become the fixture of the classical Hollywood musicals to follow.) 13 The citation is from the author's research on Times Square. The quoted text within the citation is from New York State Urban Development Corporation, Final Environmental Impact Statement: the 42nd Street Development Project (New York State UDC: New York, 1984), EIS, I–4. 14 In the last dance number sequence, while Keeler triumphs, another women dies, stabbed in the back on the street. 15 Herbert J. Gans makes a distinction between slums and low‐rent districts. 'Slum dwellings and the like may be defined as those which are proved to be physically, socially, or emotionally harmful to their residents or to the community at large. On the other hand, low‐rent dwellings and so forth, provide housing and the necessary facilities which are not harmful, to people who want, or for economic reasons must maintain, low rental payments and are willing to accept lack of modernity, high density, lack of privacy, stair climbing and other inconveniences as alternative costs'. The film's narrative often obscures the difference between a slum and a low‐income district, however, which is similar to the descriptions of blighted areas in urban planning documents, discourses that persist in the urban renewal period as well (Gans Citation1968: 211). 16 This housing problem is seen in the film very narrowly as the difference in housing quality between lavish penthouses and decaying and unsanitary tenements. 17 According to Wyler, 'everyone marveled at the huge waterfront set, which was constructed at the principal setting for the film, but to [the director] it looked very phony and artificial'. Toland used 'flat, hard lights' and 'open sun‐arcs from behind the camera, because they did not wish 'to make anybody look pretty', although a variety of lighting styles could be detected in the film. A variation between the naturalist, realist, and chiaroscuro, even early noir, styles can also be related to the film's ambiguous ideological construct (cited in Phillips Citation1998: 66; and Cormack Citation1994:131–35). 18 The first cinemas in the U.S. were built in new immigrant and working‐class urban neighborhoods; by the 1920s and 1930s, however, movie theater palaces were built for inner‐city middle‐class audiences, in central amusement districts as well as in the growing suburban areas. Although the origins of cinematic democratic impulses can thus be traced to the early silent films produced for immigrant audiences, the 1930s were marked by the studios' awareness of film as a popular mass medium and the industry's desire to target middle‐class audiences. Dead End's downplaying of the ethnicity of the protagonists contrasts with its contemporary cinema crime narratives set in ethnic immigrant neighborhoods. See, for example, the comparison between Angels With Dirty Faces (1938, d. Michael Curtiz) and Dead End in Shannon (Citation2005: 58–59). On class and spectatorship, see also Stokes (Citation2001). 19 Dead End screens the neighborhood in a frontal eye‐level point of view, resembling a theater play, emphasizing that the protagonists are constrained by the socio‐spatial construct and leading scholars to conclude that the decor of Dead End de facto represents the film's ideology (Affron and Affron Citation1995: 175–76). See the chapter on cinematic space in Deleuze and Boundas (Citation1993). 20 The neighborhood seems to be undergoing a form of commercial gentrification as Pascagli, a local restaurant owner is renaming his business into a French‐sounding 'Chez Pascagli'. This refurbishment is the sole opportunity for Dave to earn income; he explains to Drina who asks what Chez Pascagli means, that the owner 'doesn't care what [the awning] means – he saw it on Park Avenue so he thinks if he puts it up he'll get some trade from our rich neighbors'. The penthouse residents walk right through the middle of the inner courtyard area, the young boys' gang hangout spot, surrounded by the tenements that the protagonists refer to repeatedly as a slum. 21 Class polarization is shown in the narrative as a sharp difference in income, housing, job security, social status, and health. The very first lines in the film uttered by a penthouse resident referring to the Dead End boys, 'Aren't they sweet?' are, for example, met by a response, 'yes, from a distance', to convey a sense of hostility, condescension, class distance and social indifference in spite of the proximity of residence. The film's contrasting protagonists (an affluent boy taking private French lessons vs street boys' gang initiation ritual) stress the scale and the depth of the class divide, but avoid simplistic divisions. An ill‐kempt street kid in torn clothes in a short sequence remarks to the elegant Kay in passing: 'Hey, lady does your kitchen stove got diamonds like that kid makes out' but she laughs him off gently hinting that this dialogue is a part of a regular exchange and that she does not uphold the disdain of her upper‐class hosts. In turn, Kay tells Dave, an unemployed architect, in a shot on the waterfront facing the industrial skyline of Queens framed by the Queensboro Bridge, 'I had fun last night. I never knew there were so many places to go that didn't cost anything'. Dave responds 'I know 'em all' and Kate says, 'I would go to the smart places and have a dull time but I had fun with you'. 22 In one sequence, as the 'dead end' boys read newspapers that completely fabricate the plot, 'Mystery Man Today shot and killed the famous Baby Face Martin. The killing took place in a picturesque tenement basement … The walls covered with blood and bullets', one youth remarks, 'Says so in the paper, the paper can't be wrong, but that ain't the way it happened'. Further, Martin's mother is described as 'a plump peek cheeked little woman who lives in a neat cottage near Sunny Side, Long Island', and a boy notes, 'the old lady has lived up in that hole for 30 years – I don't get it ..'. 23 Rodakiewicz directed the film's New England sequences and the industrial city scenes shot in Pittsburgh, for which sequences he also wrote the script, but faced creative and intellectual differences with Mumford. 24 Alexander argues that it would be an error to hold Mumford responsible for the film's content given that he was asked to write a commentary after the initial script was completed. Mumford was not actively involved in the shooting of the film or the writing of the script, although the influence of his intellectual opus is apparent, especially in the industrial city sequences of the film (Alexander Citation1981: 250). 25 Wolfe classifies the film as a 'sponsored documentary' that placated New York audiences and pleased the funders at whose request the garden city sequences were filmed. This compromise allowed freedom to the authors in the shots critical of industrialization and environmental degradation (Wolfe Citation1993: 377). 26 Rodakiewicz noted that only the shots of anxious faces looking out of the taxis and the close‐up images of the 'meters with their fares climbing' were staged (Rodakiewicz Citation2001: 109). 27 The New York Times review of 1939 deemed the film 'an excellent documentary on housing' featuring 'graphic depiction of plan‐less squalor and planned comfort' and seemed to uphold this estimate. The New York Times explained further that The City included 'a deft montage of city life as millions of uncomplaining New York city cliff‐dwellers know it. The flashing images pass almost too swiftly to be recalled, but we remember faces caught in the midstream of traffic, subway‐showers, automatic pancake lifters, sandwich cutters, taxicab jams in the side streets, Sunday drivers, roadside picnics, Wall Street on a Sabbath morning, the Bronx express Thursday night. This impression is almost painfully comic and comically painful. If any of your out‐of‐town visitors want to know what New York is like The City would be perfect'.