Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Polaris_DiB Make no mistake--the Industrial Revolution's impact of cinema is so profound that it's hardly an impact, as cinema simply wouldn't exist without it. As such, many early films took their subject with the world that had spawned around them, skyscrapers and their creation, factories and their workers, trains and their operation, cars and machinery and smoke. It was as if the world built itself to be photographed in motion, then invented motion pictures.This film is one of those interstitial documents that exist between important texts. It is far removed from the early actualities, but focuses on many of the same subjects with a clearer image. By the time this film came out, editing had come to its own as an art form and this movie didn't particularly add anything to montage that wasn't already recognized. Intertitles were expected. However, this movie did come before Berlin: Symphony of a City and was very inspirational to various filmmakers in the idea of documenting the modern world with an eye towards frame-by-frame meaning and abstract structuralism, which directly links it to the great and famous Man with a Movie Camera.--PolarisDiB

Michael_Elliott 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.

monkeyman85 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.

Cineanalyst 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.