[Commlist] CFP "After the City Symphony"

In 1932, referring to the scripts submitted to him by young members of 
the British documentary school, John Grierson wrote: “/Berlin/ [Walter 
Ruttmann, 1927] still excites the mind of the young, and the symphony 
form is still their most popular persuasion. In fifty scenarios 
presented by the tyros, forty-five are symphonies of Edinburgh or of 
Ecclefechan or of Paris or of Prague” (Grierson 105). While undoubtedly 
an exaggeration, this statement nevertheless testifies to the importance 
of the city symphony genre beyond the timeframe that is usually ascribed 
to it (1920-1930). Far from being anecdotal in the history of cinema, or 
limited to a handful of famous films – /Manhatta/ (1921), /Rien que les 
heures/ (1926), /Berlin: Symphony of a Great City/ (1927), /Rain 
/(1929), /Man with a Movie Camera/ (1929), /A propos de Nice/ (1930) – 
the city symphony has kept on capturing the imaginations of many 
filmmakers throughout the world from the early 1930s to the present day.

Besides its usual limitation to a specific time period and subject, the 
city symphony is characterised by an absence of plot, narrative rhythm 
and characters, and a structure borrowed from the movements of 
orchestral symphonies. For Grierson, the structuring in movements and 
the attention paid to rhythmic variations are even the main 
characteristics of the genre, thus breaking with the plot-driven 
classical novel or theatre, or with classical pictorial art. Documentary 
historian Richard Meran Barsam defines city symphonies as “brief and 
realistic nonfiction views of city life, united within a larger 
/rhythmic structure /[our emphasis]– a symphony – by the recurrence of 
images, motifs, and themes that provide continuity and progression of 
ideas” (Barsam 59). Another definition proposed by Steven Jacobs, Eva 
Hielscher and Anthony Kinik considers the city symphony to be an 
“experimental documentary” dealing with “the energy, the patterning, the 
complexities, and the subtleties of a city” (Jacobs et al. 10). In their 
book /The City Symphony Phenomenon/ (2018), the authors identify several 
features common to all city symphonies. These include a focus on icons 
of modernity (mobile bridges, construction sites, high rises and 
skyscrapers, factory chimneys and machinery, telecommunications 
equipment... ), an attention to the contrasts and diversity of modern 
cities, and an unobtrusive director, favouring the poetic or reflexive 
documentary modes rather than the expository mode (as per Bill Nichols’s 
classification). Additionally, they are characterised by photography 
that often employs fragmentation, canted angles and unusual 
perspectives, as well as rapid editing and the use of split screens, 
evoking the frenzy of modern metropolitan life.

While Jacobs, Hielscher and Kinik choose to classify city symphonies in 
the documentary genre, others list them under avant-garde or 
experimental cinema. It is important to note, however, that most city 
symphonies came into being at a time when the notion of “documentary 
film” did not yet exist (the first mention of “documentary” as a film 
genre dates from 1933) and when “experimental” or “avant-garde” cinema 
was still in its infancy. Furthermore, while theorists agree that city 
symphonies belong to a non-fictional genre, John Grierson, as well as 
Paul Rotha and Siegfried Kracauer, consider a film like Alberto 
Cavalcanti’s /Rien que les heures/ (1926) to be a canonical 
representative of the city symphony, even though it contains numerous 
fictional passages and has little “documentary value”, to use Grierson’s 
terms. For Nichols (102-105), the poetic experimentation inherent to the 
city symphonies and other avant-garde films of the 1920s even gave way 
to documentary as a film genre in its own right.

It is probably the formal fluidity of the city symphony – a sensory 
representation of the city that does not have a strict formal framework 
– that makes it a genre whose resonance extends well beyond the 
1920s-1930s. Many films produced after the 1930s bear traces of the city 
symphony. Examples include /The City/ (1939) by Ralph Steiner and 
Willard Van Dyke/, Listen to Britain/ (1942) by Humphrey Jennings, 
/Människor i stad/ (1947), literally “People in the City”, but 
distributed under the title /Symphony of a City/, by Arne Sucksdorff, 
/Daybreak Express/ (1953/8) by D.A. Pennebaker, /N.Y., N.Y./ (1957) by 
Francis Thompson, and /Broadway By Light/ (1958) by William Klein. Other 
films such as Helen Levitt’s /In the Street/ (1948), Rudy Burckhardt’s 
/Under the Brooklyn Bridge/ (1953), Shirley Clarke’s 
/Bridges-go-round/ (1958) and/Skyscraper/ (1959), and /Go! Go! 
Go!/ (1962-4) by Marie Menken, although they do not paint a portrait of 
the city as a whole, focus on certain aspects of New York (architecture, 
traffic, etc.). More recently, Godfrey Reggio’s celebrated experimental 
film /Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance/ (1983), made up of a 
succession of static shots with no voiceover dealing with the ills of a 
modern world “out of balance”, although it does not focus exclusively on 
a particular city or urban areas, could also be counted as an heir to 
the city symphony. Since the late 2000s, several contemporary forms of 
city symphony have emerged, such as Alex Barrett’s /London 
Symphony/ (2017), Geoffrey Cox and Keith Marley’s /A Film about Nice/ 
(2010), /Finisterre: A Film About London/ (2003) by Paul Kelly and 
Kieran Evans, /Signal 8/ (2019) by Simon Liu, /Of Time and the 
City/ (2008) by Terence Davies, /I Am Belfast/ (2015) and /Stockholm My 
Love/ (2017) by Mark Cousins, and /London: The Modern Babylon/ (2008) by 
Julien Temple. While the first four films are direct tributes to the 
city symphonies of the 1920s and 1930s, the following ones 
followcharacters, either fictional (the female personification of 
Belfast or the character, played by Neneh Cherry, who guides the viewer 
through Stockholm in Cousins’ film) or real (Terence Davies himself, the 
London artists on whom Julien Temple focuses), thus moving away from the 
original form.

Generally speaking, all psychogeographic films (which follow the 
wanderings of characters, visible or acousmatic, through a space) could 
also be classified as contemporary city symphonies, even though they 
retain a certain narrative logic. Films such as Norman Cohen’s /The 
London Nobody Knows/ (1967), which follows the progress of the narrator 
played by James Mason, Chantal Akerman’s /News from Home/ (1977), or 
Patrick Keiller’s trilogy /London/ (1994), /Robinson In Space/ (1997) 
and /Robinson In Ruins/ (2010) are representative examples.

Finally, some fiction films too have incorporated stylistic features of 
the city symphony. The opening of Woody Allen’s /Manhattan/ (1979), 
Jean-Luc Godard’s /Two or Three Things I Know About Her/ (1967), and 
more generally films of the new waves (Italian neo-realism, British free 
cinema, the French new wave, new Hollywood), depict cities and 
contemporary urban life. The formal heritage of city symphonies, in 
particular the symphonic form, the construction in movements and the 
rhythmic dimension, has however been little exploited in contemporary 
narrative cinema. For Andréa Franco, Benjamin Léon and Nicolas Tixier 
(2021), we must question the ability of the cinematic medium to depict 
contemporary cities in the same way as city symphonies, given the 
disconnection between different spaces, the proliferation of new centres 
and the virtualisation of the workforce. In their view, filmic 
representations of the city are still too often rooted in the twentieth 
century, and we need to turn to new manifestations of cinema’s place in 
the post-modern city, as Thom Andersen’s film essay /Los Angeles Plays 
Itself/ (2003) does. Moreover, the symphonic shaping of the city has 
also given way to new resurgences in the pure visual rhythm of animation 
or in the hybridization between cartoons and live action (/City of 
Lights/, Daan Verbiest et Teun van der Zalm, 2007 ; /Une ville/, 
Emmanuel Bellegarde, 2009).

The aim of this one-day conference is thus to examine the legacy of city 
symphonies in post-1930s cinema. Proposals for papers may cover (but are 
not restricted to) the following topics:

- The legacy and resurgence of the city symphony genre after the 1930s 
in avant-garde cinema, documentary cinema (e.g. official Olympic 
documentaries) and experimental cinema.

- Psychogeographic cinema as a manifestation of the city symphony

- The influence of the city symphony in narrative cinema or the 
insertion of sequences inspired by city symphonies in fiction films

- Tributes to the traditional city symphony or, on the contrary, 
creation outside the canon

- New ways of representing the city in the 21^st century

- Convergences between city symphonies and musical genres, particularly 
in music videos

- Contemporary personal views of the city and urban life (immigrant or 
expatriate views, or portraits of artists associated with a city)

- City symphonies on cities of the Global South

- The city symphony and animation


*_Selected bibliography _*

Barsam, Richard Meran./Non-fiction Film: A Critical History/. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical 
Reproduction”./Illuminations: Essays and Reflections/. Ed. Hannah 
Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968: 217-251.
Château, Dominique. « Le rôle de la musique dans la définition du cinéma 
comme art : à propos de l’avant-garde des années 20 »./Cinémas/3, no 1 
(8 March 2011): 78‑94.
Franco, Andrea, Benjamin Léon, et Nicolas Tixier. « Symphonies urbaines 
à rebours »./La Furia Umana/ Tracer les villes / Track the Cities, no 40 
(March 2021).
Gaudin, Antoine. « La Grande Ville comme proposition formelle : des 
symphonies urbaines du muet aux vidéoclips contemporains, l’évolution 
d’une musique des images ». In/Professionnalisation des métiers des 
arts, de la culture et des médias suivi de Art, ville, images/, 
Abdelbaki Belfakih and Bruno Péquignot ed. Questions contemporaines. 
Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018.
Gauthier, Guy, Marie-Thérèse Gauthier, and Daniel Sauvaget./Le 
documentaire, un autre cinéma : histoire et création/. 5th ed. Paris: 
Armand Colin, 2015.
Ghent Urban Studies Team, dir./The Urban Condition: Space, Community, 
and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis/. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1999.
Grierson, John. « First principles of documentary »./Grierson on 
Documentary/, 1966, 145‑56.
———. « The Symphonic Film »./Cinema Quarterly/ 2, no 3 (Spring 1934): 
155‑59.
Hansen, Miriam./Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter 
Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno/. Weimar and Now: German Cultural 
Criticism 44. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Jacobs, Steven, Anthony Kinik, and Eva Hielscher./The City Symphony 
Phenomenon: Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars/. New 
York: Routledge, 2019.
Jousse, Thierry and Thierry Paquot, dir./La ville au cinéma : 
encyclopédie/. Paris: Cahiers de Cinéma, 2005.
Koeck, Richard./Cine-Scapes: Cinematic Spaces in Architecture and 
Cities/. Londres: Routledge, 2012.
Kracauer, Siegfried./Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical 
Reality/. 1960. Reprint, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Nichols, Bill with Jaimie Baron./Introduction to Documentary/. 4th 
edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024.
Simmel, Georg. « The Metropolis and Mental Life ». In/Georg Simmel on 
Individuality and Social Forms/, David N. Levine., 324‑39. Chicago: 
University of Chicago, 1971.


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