Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1939)

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HENRY HERBERT 483 Fifth Avenue New York cheery sequences to follow; film the barber shops; film the "hotels" with their advertisements — "Beds 25c"; film the pawnshops and the groups of fuzzy whiskered men on the street corners — all very much as they were in the old days. Then take your taxi up to Greenwich Village and Washington Square. 12:00 noon. Greenwich Village. To convey the transition of locale, try shooting a few street signs here and there on the way uptown, spliced (later, of course) between scenes of a taxicab passing the camera. At Washington Square, ask the cabman to get out of his cab for you while you film his feet (provided they're presentable) descending to the pavement. The Village, presumably a haunt of Bohemians, is filled with sunlight and ruddy residential peace. But don't trouble yourself to search for the more picturesque houses. Film those on the north side of Washington Square. Film Washington Arch, a copy of the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris. Walk up Fifth Avenue a block and photograph the studios on Washington Mews, certainly as quaint as any in the village. Once stables for the lovely town houses you have seen on Washington Square North, these low roofed, large doored structures have proved to be ideal working studios for sculptor and painter. In one, which you may find identified, the redoubtable Grover Whalen, executive genius of the World's Fair, has a small city apartment! So, let the sequence of Greenwich Village be of somebody strolling across Washington Square, past the perambulators (so Bohemian ! ) and under the arch, with a scene or two of Washington Mews and a near shot of one of the carriage wide, wooden doors. Climax at the sidewalk cafe of the Brevoort — a cool and charming oasis. 12:30 p.m. Forty Second Street. From the Square, ride up Fifth Avenue (which begins there) on the Fifth Avenue bus. Be sparing of your scenes en route, since the best of the Avenue lies above Forty Second Street, and a moving bus is definitely unsatisfactory as a camera truck. Film the Empire State Building as you approach it on the bus, but get off when you come to the Public Library. Here the local aspect, having changed again, is movement — people walking this way and that, motors scurrying and policemen doing their patient best. Catch one of the officers as •he raises his hand and puffs out his cheeks to blow his whistle. Photograph the crowds from the corner of the Public Library terrace. Affairs are alive with movement, yet different in mood from the dark earnestness of Wall Street. 2:00 p.m. Rockefeller Center. Here is the bright and fabulous crown of the city, with the sun full upon its busy streets. An hour of our precious and partitioned off day could be spent here, for there is nothing else in New York (or anywhere in the world) comparable to these buildings. It happens that most of the angles are Teady made. We urge that you stroll around St. Patrick's Cathedral and film the angled contrasts of architecture. Here, along the Avenue side of the Center, stands a bank of elms. The day has become, as you see, a full one, yet not too full, if you can tear yourself from Mr. Rockefeller's wonders. Stroll up Fifth Avenue now, flavoring and filming. The Avenue is New York at its best, and whatever you photograph will be characteristic and local and cosmopolitan and international. Fifth Avenue ranks easily among the world's distinguished boulevards ; smart stores dress their windows with an eye on the general effect; art galleries are dignified and defiant; clubs and hotels speak quietly of wealth and fine living. As a consequence, the atmosphere all along the way is distinct. It changes gradually, however, as you near Central Park. 4:00 p.m. Central Park. Being widespread, Central Park is not a simple subject. But there is a concentration of its atmosphere in the region around the "zoo," where small children roll hoops and where there are toy balloons and scooters and all the paraphernalia of innocent merriment. Film the youngsters joggling wondrously on pony back. Film the meadows above the region of the "zoo," and the apartment buildings that flank this enormous rectangular rus in urbe. Moreover, if you feel minded to journey twenty blocks uptown, you can find an attractive little lake where the children sail boats. 5 :00 p.m. The Hendrik Hudson Parkway. And, now, at last, this subject brings us to the end of our daytime sequences. To convey the transition from Central Park, film the cars rolling through the park on their way uptown, then let the scene shift to a similar angle of the machines on the Hendrik Hudson Parkway. Of the night time in New York, there is not much to say, but, if you film a few scenes here and there at twilight, the transition of tonal values is smoothed; and you need only to take your camera, then, to Times Square. It is the heart of the New York night. The daytime's shoddiness is all gone. The darkness is pressed back to the rooftops of the buildings. Things gleam and flicker and bulge, and all luminously, and all carnival like. The crowds are finished with the day; they have come loose from the residential sections and are wandering through. It is all exceedingly cinematic and a fine ending for the entire reel of New York City — this street that Chesterton said would seem a miracle to anybody unable to read.